Public Health Agency's Deputy Director-General Dr Andrew Old and Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand national director Dr Nick Chamberlain have given and update on Covid-19, monkeypox and winter illnesses in a press conference this afternoon.
Watch the update here:
Today there are 6152 new community cases of Covid-19 today and a further 49 deaths with the virus].
There are also 663 people in hospital, including 14 in ICU.
Dr Old said daily case rates were trending downwards in all regions for the second week running, dropping 18 percent in the last week to 31 July.
Case numbers in over 65s had dropped by 21 percent in the last week.
Old said wastewater testing and testing of healthcare workers supported the conclusion that community transmission of Covid-19 was decreasing.
Despite the downwards trend in case numbers, Covid-19 hospitalisation rates rose by 35 percent in the week to 31 July. Old said all regions barring the Northern region had seen hospitalisation rates increase.
"While hospitalisations are still rising again our expectation is that peak hospitalisation will be at the lower end of what was modelled, while we could still reach 1000 occupied beds we are tracking closer to a peak of 850 occupied beds across the country."
From 8 August, 230,000 people who used health services in 2021 will be formally added to Health Service User data set used to count vaccinations, replacing the 2020 data set with the up to date one, Old said.
The total number of people aged over 12 who have had at least two doses of vaccine increased 9.6 percent in the last eight months going from 3.63 million on 1 December 2021 to 3.98 million on 1 August 2022.
The reported vaccination rates would show a drop next week because there would be more people counted, Old said.
The updated data set would include 233,000 more people.
Health authorities were committed to updating the data set every six months to ensure reporting was up to date as possible, he said.
The new data set will remove age at vaccination to current age, and also remove the term "fully vaccinated". The definition did not include boosters. Now, a person is considered "up to date" if they have had all the vaccinations to which they are entitled.
Monkeypox in NZ
Chamberlain said the third case of monkeypox in New Zealand was yesterday validated by ESR and the person was doing well isolating in the South Island.
The first two cases of monkeypox in New Zealand had now recovered and there was no link between the cases, Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain said monkeypox cases were continuing to rise globally. Oxford University's latest estimate was that there were more than 23,000 cases in 78 countries.
"The people at highest risk are those who have had skin-to-skin or sexual contact with people who have monkeypox.
"Most people are not at risk of monkeypox though we note that recently described by a colleague monkeypox is a very democratic virus and can infect anyone."
New Zealanders travelling overseas were being urged to take precautions, particularly around practising safe sex, Chamberlain said.
He said the monkeypox vaccine was only manufactured by one company and there was a global shortage - and it could only be purchased for national supply and in large portions.
Health authorities were working out eligibility, distribution and workforce criteria, he said.
"It's unlikely that we'll have a prophylactic campaign in advance of community transmission, vaccination is an important tool but it's certainly not the only one we have available to limit community spread."
Health NZ was working with the Burnett Foundation to ensure the correct health promotion messages were in use.
However, the risk of monkeypox remained low - although cases were bound to continue to arrive in the country and community transmission was likely to occur eventually, Chamberlain said.
He said there was a cross agency plan to tackle monkeypox. The Burnett Foundation - which criticised the "piecemeal response" - was probably not aware of all the activity going on, he said. The action plan contained most of the actions outlined in that letter.
Health New Zealand had acted to procure a vaccine for monkeypox as soon as the first case had been detected in the country, he said.
"From the moment we had the first case, we were talking with Pharmac about procuring vaccine."
There was no vaccine on order as of yet and even larger countries were struggling to get it, Chamberlain said.
Pharmac was leading the effort to procure a monkeypox vaccine. Health NZ and Pharmac would be trying to order around 20,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine, Chamberlain said.
On the approach to quelling future monkeypox outbreaks, Old said "Where we've seen some of those countries not do so well, part of it has been because of a focus purely on narrow vaccine and therapeutic approaches - the point that I think is being made here is that we have a really good chance now because we don't have any community transmission to get ahead of this with broader public health measures".
Old said public health measures such as contact tracing could help health authorities keep on top of community transmission of monkeypox.
Chamberlain said while Australia had secured "very small" amounts of the monkeypox vaccine, it was also queuing to procure additional vaccine along with many countries around the world.
He said messaging around the risk of monkeypox and health advice for infected people could be used at New Zealand's border in the future.
A complete package of monkeypox messaging from health authorities was expected to be ready in roughly two weeks, Chamberlain said.
Winter illnesses
In an update on winter illnesses and the vaccination programme, Chamberlain said recent changes to boost access to anti-viral meds for Covid 19, and improved access to after hours and community had made a big difference to relieve pressure on the health system.
Vaccination remained a corner stone of the Covid-19 response along with working with Māori and Pasifika providers, he said.
Chamberlain said $26.9 million would be allocated to the recently announced Māori and Pasifika Omicron response fund. Providers were invited to apply for funding.
The Ministry of Health yesterday reported 6440 new Covid-19 cases in the community today, and 704 hospitalisations, including 11 in ICU.
Meanwhile, leading health advocates are pleading for bolder action on monkeypox, saying New Zealand could see the same failures as other countries if the government does not act now.
