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New Zealand government takes a calculated risk to relax Auckland’s lockdown while new cases continue to appear

In an article on The Conversation UC Professor Michael Plank and Professor Shaun Hendy from the University of Auckland assess the risks that come with moving Auckland to Alert Level 3 and describe the potential worst case scenario, comparing it to the outbreaks in Australia.

Photo by Dan Freeman

On a positive note, most of these new cases have been identified by contact tracing and many have been isolated before they tested positive, meaning they have had fewer chances to infect others.

On the other hand, a worrying few continue to test positive before being identified by contract tracers. Ideally we would like to see no more of these cases because they are much more likely to have been infectious in the community. We can’t be confident that the Delta outbreak is contained until these become few and far between.

This doesn’t mean level 4 has failed or that level 3 will. By the time this outbreak was detected on August 17, there were several hundred cases in the community. Level 4 put the brakes on that, but our contact tracers have struggled to extinguish the outbreak entirely.

At this stage, there still appears to be a low level of spread between households. Level 3 gives the virus more opportunities to spread and contact tracers will have to work harder to get ahead of cases.

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