New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said a nationwide lockdown is working and she remains committed to stamping out a Delta outbreak of coronavirus even as case numbers continue to grow.
“Overall, lockdown is having an impact,” Ardern told a news conference Thursday in Wellington. “No one wants to use lockdowns forever and I can tell you now that is not our intention. But for now, while we vaccinate, elimination is the goal, and we can do it.”
Health officials on Thursday reported 68 new cases in the current community outbreak of the highly infectious Delta strain of Covid-19, taking the total to 277. The strict national lockdown has been in place for more than a week and Ardern is due to announce Friday whether it will need to be further extended.
“Nothing at the moment appears to us to be necessarily unexpected, but we do need to be incredibly vigilant,” she said. “Delta has changed the rules of the game.”
The Delta variant is testing New Zealand’s elimination strategy because it is so much more transmissible than the first iteration of the virus and has a shorter incubation period, giving contact tracers less time to find and isolate positive cases before they become infectious. The country has been left vulnerable by one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the developed world, with only around 20 percent of its population fully immunized so far.
Ardern said the rate of transmission within infected households was high, but it was encouraging that the outbreak hasn’t spread beyond Auckland and Wellington.
“If it weren’t for lockdown, I’m sure we would have seen cases spread further,” she said. “Lockdown is also having an impact on locations of interest. While our cases are continuing to grow, these locations of interest aren’t continuing to grow exponentially alongside them.”
New Zealand’s elimination strategy, which has seen it largely keep the virus out of the community since its initial lockdown over a year ago, remained the best path to follow for now as vaccination was ramped up, Ardern said.
Key developments
Sydney’s Delta surge worsens
Sydney’s outbreak of Delta variant cases is worsening, with Australia’s largest city responsible for the bulk of new daily Covid-19 infections as New South Wales state passed 1,000 for the first time.
Stay-at-home orders for New South Wales will be extended until at least September 10, Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney on Thursday. The state saw a record 1,029 daily infections since the outbreak began in the city in mid-June, she said, and three more people died.
Some Moderna shots halted in Japan
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd. said it would suspend use of 1.63 million doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in Japan after it received reports of foreign particles in the vials from several vaccination sites. Takeda is the vaccine’s local distributor.
There have been no safety concerns tied to the affected vials, and vaccinations using other Moderna shots in Japan will progress as usual. A Moderna spokesperson confirmed the halt of some batches in Japan and said it is currently investigating. It believes a manufacturing issue arose at one line of its contract manufacturing site in Spain.
Singapore’s reopening commitment tested
A jump in Covid cases to more than 100 a day poses a potential test of resolve for Singapore officials who are counting on one of the world’s best vaccination rates to allow them to stay the course and keep reopening.
A cluster at Bugis Junction, a local shopping mall, added 38 new cases on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health. Most of them are linked to multi-story department store BHG, which was closed through August 30 for deep cleaning. The government is encouraging anyone who went to the mall since August 17 to get a free Covid test.
Italy donates AstraZeneca doses to Vietnam
Italy will donate 801,600 AstraZeneca Covid vaccine doses to Vietnam via the Covax facility, with delivery expected in early September, according to a post on the Vietnam government’s web site.
The Southeast Asian nation has administered more than 18 million vaccine doses as of Tuesday with about 2 million residents, or 2.1 percent of its population, fully inoculated, according to the health ministry.
Vietnam has reported a total of over 9,300 deaths, with 81 percent in Ho Chi Minh City, of more than 377,200 local virus cases recorded in the latest outbreak that began in late April.
Manhattan bosses scale back hopes for September office return
Manhattan employers now see 41 percent of office workers returning by Sept. 30, down from an estimate of 62 percent in May, according to a survey by the Partnership for New York City conducted August 9-20.
About 23 percent of workers have returned to the workplace, up from 12 percent in May. About 44 percent of employers have delayed return plans because of the rise in Covid-19 cases, though 54 percent have not made changes.
WHO backs $10 billion global health fund
The World Health Organization has backed a proposal to set up a $10 billion fund to plug the financial gap in the global health-care system exposed by the pandemic.
The annual Global Health Threats Fund is part of efforts by G-20 finance ministers to double spending in health care and boost the financial capacity to respond to future pandemics, said Singapore Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam during a WHO press briefing on Wednesday.
According to Tharman, global health security is “dangerously underfunded,” making it vulnerable to a prolonged Covid-19 pandemic and future ones, unless public funding is increased.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that the report, currently under consideration, is consistent with previous calls to increase financing to support the organization’s preparedness for fighting pandemics.
New NY governor adds 12,000 deaths
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who took office Tuesday, reported nearly 12,000 more deaths in the state from Covid-19 than had been publicized by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.
The state database on pandemic deaths was updated to include both the official tally from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of nearly 55,400 and previously reported state numbers of 43,400.
Delta to levy fee on unvaccinated workers
Delta Air Lines Inc. will impose a $200 monthly surcharge on employees who aren’t vaccinated against Covid-19, becoming the first major US company to levy a penalty to encourage workers to get protected.
The new policy was outlined in a company memo Wednesday from Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian, who said 75 percent of the carrier’s workers are already vaccinated. Bloomberg News
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