The sheer scale of the rapid increase in cases of Covid-19 in the Bay of Plenty has been made clear by figures released by Toi Te Ora Public Health.
Regional figures show that in each of the last two days there were more cases of Covid-19 daily, than previously seen in a four-week period throughout January and February.
The daily caseload announced on Wednesday for the region was 1270, amid a nationwide-high daily total of 22,152.
Toi Te Ora recorded 1184 new cases on the previous day, Tuesday, March 1.
Both of those figures dwarf the number of cases in the entire four-week period up until Wednesday, February 23.
Toi Te Ora stats show that the Bay of Plenty District Health Board recorded a total of just 839 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in that four-week period.
That equates to 345 and 431 more cases on Monday and Tuesday respectively compared to the total for the aforementioned four-week timescale.
The increase in cases was expected due to the move toward Rapid Antigen Testing being the primary identifier of Covid-19 in the community.
Last week, the Ministry of Health explained how this rise was likely, with cases during the Omicron outbreak likely to be underreported with just PCR testing.
'Based on overseas experiences, the Ministry of Health has been expecting the true number of community cases to be higher than the cases reported each day and this has been factored into our Omicron planning,” says a MOH spokesperson.
Of the 1184 cases reported on Tuesday, 779 were in Tauranga.
A further 265 were in the Western Bay, 110 in Whakatane, 20 in Kawerau and 10 in Opotiki – with 1185 active cases in total across the Bay of Plenty.
That number will have increased with Wednesday's figures.
Yesterday, the MOH announced there are currently 12 people hospitalised in the Bay of Plenty with Covid-19.
Vaccination booster rates across the Bay of Plenty DHB are currently the second-lowest in the country, joint with Auckland Metro on 68.1 per cent and only higher than Waikato, whose numbers sit at 66.9 per cent.
However, 93.3 per cent of the Bay of Plenty have received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
3 comments
Get the booster.
Posted on 03-03-2022 12:21 | By morepork
Even if you believe it is TOTALLY ineffective (it isn't...) what do you have to lose? You already got 2 shots of vaccine, you might as well top it off with the booster...
Share nonsense
Posted on 03-03-2022 13:03 | By an_alias
We have had 2 years to plan so trying to pretend that is a large case load is an absolute joke. With the RAT test 1270 can be done quickly. What should be reported is the slow use of them when they have been available overseas for 12 months or more.
@an_alias
Posted on 05-03-2022 14:31 | By morepork
I think they are saying that RAT is uncovering more cases than could be done by full testing, so at least some of the 1270 identified on Wednesday probably came from RAT. I agree with you 100% that if everyone had easy access to RAT we could probably accurately identify all cases in the country within a very quick time period. (Whether we could then deal with them all, would remain arguable...). If it really isn't so bad and just requires some time in bed, then we would probably be OK, but if it needs hospitalization then we are in trouble. The answer is widespread availability and use of RATs, and we are woefully late in this department.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to make a comment.