Hipkins expects more Covid-19 community cases today

August 22, 2021

The Covid-19 Minister gave an update on Q+A with Jack Tame this morning.

Chris Hipkins says "we expect there will be more cases today" as New Zealand continues to be affected by the Covid-19 Delta outbreak, but he couldn't confirm any new cases recorded overnight. 

The Covid-19 Response Minister gave the update on Q+A with Jack Tame this morning.

When asked, that given the infectiousness of the Delta variant if elimination was still a viable strategy, Hipkins said it was "too early to tell" but "we're still aiming for elimination".

"We do need to give it a really good go, see if we can drive it out again. That's still our number one priority at the moment, that's absolutely what we're focussed on."

He added that the variant does "raise some big questions we're going to have to grapple with".

"Less than 24 hours between someone getting it and passing it on to others, that's like nothing we've dealt with in this pandemic so far and that does change everything," he said.

"It does mean that all of our existing protections start to look less adequate and less robust as a result of that.

"We're looking at what more we can do there but yes it does raise some pretty big questions about what the long term future of our plans are.

"We very focussed on making sure that we're preparing for a different kind of a future but at this point we don't really know what that'll look like."

Amid the outbreak, the Government announced Friday that New Zealand would remain at Alert Level 4 until 11.59pm Tuesday.

But Hipkins this morning said Aucklanders should mentally prepare to spend a bit longer in lockdown. 

However he was less committed on Wellington's lockdown extension, despite having community cases there too, mostly thanks to one case there who didn't go anywhere.

Click here for the latest contract tracing locations of interest from the Ministry of Health.

"We still want to try and drive Covid out of the community as much as we possibly can, that hasn't changed, the basis of elimination that you drive it out wherever it pops up, we still absolutely want to do that, that's exactly what we're trying to do at the moment," Hipkins said.

"The reality is though, that with a virus that can be infectious within 24 hours of someone getting it that does change the game a bit.

"What we've got to do is work out how we can continue with an elimination strategy with some things changing, including that we can't sustain doing Level 4 lockdowns every time there's a community [case]."

The Covid-19 Minister gave an update on Q+A with Jack Tame this morning.

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