March 01, 2021
Fear level too low for Covid speed
A member of Māori pandemic response group Te Rōpu Whakakaupapa Urutā is warning Auckland’s week-long level 3 lockdown is likely to be extended or even upgraded to level 4.
Dr Rawiri Jansen says much will depend on whether a breach in isolation procedures leads to more cases.
Health authorities are trying to trace contacts of people in the Auckland February cluster who went to work, went to the gym or went to Manukau Institute of Technology when they were supposed to be isolating while they waited for test results.
Dr Jansen says it’s predicable human behaviour gets out of alignment with alert levels.
“This variant can travel very quickly. That’s prompted us to go to alert level 3 and depending on numbers I think we are looking at probably extending more than one week but if we see the numbers start to grow I think we then have to look at look at what level we are at and whether level 3 is sufficient,” he says.
Dr Jansen says with the vaccine roll out near, it’s important people hang on and cut down unnecessary contacts.
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