21 Sep 2020

Epidemiologist on moving alert levels

From First Up, 5:51 am on 21 September 2020

The Government will today decide whether we're ready to ease Covid-19 restrictions, nearly six weeks after the virus re-emerged in New Zealand. It's agreed in principle for everywhere but Auckland to move to Alert Level 1 from midnight tonight, and for Auckland to remain at Level 2 but with eased restrictions on gatherings from Thursday. But after a run of no new community cases last week, two community cases were reported yesterday - as well as two new imported cases. A community case was also picked up on Saturday, for which the source is still not clear because the person was diagnosed after completing managed isolation. So with Covid-19 continuing to rear it's head in the community, are we ready to ease the restrictions or would doing so put New Zealanders at risk? Joining Indira Stewart to discuss is University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker.