Watch: Chris Hipkins and Dr Ashley Bloomfield provide a COVID-19 update. Credits: Video - Newshub; Image - Getty.
After a short, sharp lockdown, Auckland is back under alert level 2 while the rest of New Zealand has dropped to alert level 1.
The moves comes despite three new community cases of COVID-19 being reported on Wednesday. All three, however, are connected to the original trio from the weekend and there is no evidence yet - either from community testing or wastewater testing - of any wider parallel transmission.
Of the 31 close contacts of the original cases, 30 have tested negative while the last is one of the three new positive cases. The test results of more than 360 casual-plus contacts - many from Papatoetoe High School - remain outstanding, but 1159 have tested negative. Contact tracing is now underway for the three new cases.
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Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, the President-elect of the International Science Council (ISC) from the University of Auckland, joins epidemiologist Professor Sir David Skegg of the University of Otago as part of an oversight panel for the recently launched ISC Covid-19 Scenarios Project.
The panel was announced in the world-leading medical journal The Lancet in a commentary, ‘Future scenarios for the Covid-19 pandemic’, co-authored by Sir Peter and Sir David, and panel members Geoffrey Boulton, Heide Hackmann, Salim Abdool Karim, Peter Piot, and Christiane Woopen.
The panel of international science leaders also includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), an advisor to President Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board and other microbiologists and epidemiologists.
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The panel of international science leaders also includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), an advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board and other microbiologists and epidemiologists.
Within eight months, the panel will report on the possible COVID-19 scenarios the world faces over the next three to five years, and on the choices for governments, agencies, and citizens.
Sir Peter, who heads Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland, initiated the ISC project. He says decisions made by governments and individuals over coming months will impact on how the world recovers from the pandemic over the next three to five years.