There are strong signs Auckland has reached the peak of Omicron Covid-19 case numbers, a modeller says, but hospitalisations and other regions' cases are not there yet.
Photo: 123rf
Canterbury University epidemic modeller Michael Plank said he is confident community cases in the Auckland region will edge down from here, but that hospitalisations will be slower to decline.
Community case numbers in the supercity have been falling slowly: 4509 were reported today, down from 6077 reported yesterday, and 7240 the day before, and less than half the number reported some days last week.
There were 14,494 new community cases today, more than 4000 fewer than yesterday.
Michael Plank Photo: Supplied.
Read more: Covid-19 data visualisations: NZ in numbers
Plank, who is a maths professor, said hospitalisations lag behind community cases and are expected to continue rising before they begin slowly decreasing.
He expects other regions' case numbers will follow Auckland, and will peak in about a week.
"Places that are relatively close to Auckland, like Hamilton, Tauranga, are probably not too far behind.
"But then places that are a bit further afield, Wellington and the South Island are probably a week or a week and a half behind Auckland."
Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said there may still be bad news ahead due to deaths lagging cases.
"The other thing we have to remember is a lot of people who have been infected in this wave in New Zealand has been younger people, so if it moves from younger people into older age groups then we're much more likely to see an increase in deaths."
Wiles said there needs to be a settling of the numbers before it could be declared that Auckland had peaked.
But she was worried about what is happening in Europe.
"They had a wave and it dropped quite quickly and now it's rising again. We're obviously going into winter and that really concerns me because as well as having Covid, we're also soon opening our borders, so we're going to have more things like influenza coming in, so it could be a very difficult winter ahead and I think people really need to be preparing themselves for that."
On Friday, Auckland health authorities also said they were beginning to see signs of a peak.
Shorter home isolation requirement welcomed
A community health provider says a reduction in home isolation will help ease the burden for struggling families.
On Friday the isolation period for cases and household contacts became one week - down from 10 days.
However anyone who still has symptoms after their seven days of isolation are done must still continue to isolate until 24 hours after their symptoms are gone.
The Fono's Tevita Funaki Photo: Dominic Godfrey / RNZ Pacific
The Fono chief operating officer Tevita Funaki welcomed the change and said it was pragmatic.
Many families face challenges with home isolation and are desperate to get back to work and to get children back to school as soon as possible, Funaki said.
"There's a level of anxiety [around] isolating at home, and understanding Pacific - we have quite a number of families that are overcrowding in homes."
