21 new community cases, supply of more vaccines in September being finalised

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021, 12:32PM

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield provided an update on the latest community cases and vaccine rollout.

What you need to know:

Jacinda Ardern says vaccine demand has been at 180% recently, per capita making the rollout in recent weeks higher than the peaks in places like Canada and the UK
To keep up with this surge demand the Government had been negotiating with Pfizer and other countries to increase supply
Additional supply was being finalised for September, Ardern said. Final contracts were still being signed so she could not finalise countries nor quantities, but they were Pfizer vaccines
This would also allow New Zealand to continue its vaccine sharing arrangements with Pacific nations
Ardern said there remained enough vaccines in the country to keep up with surge demand. Extra supplies had been secured from multiple countries and more details could be revealed in "a matter of days", Ardern said
She said 682,000 vaccines were in stock, the vast majority at sites already nationwide
She also said more than enough vaccines for every eligible New Zealander had been ordered and there would be enough vaccines for the Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue as well
There are 21 cases in the community, bringing the total outbreak to 841, 147 recovered
1 case is to be determined whether it is a community case or a border case
39 are in hospital, 6 in ICU, 4 require ventilation
Ashley Bloomfield said all current cases in the outbreak were genomically linked to the first Delta case in New Zealand
Yesterday just over 7000 swabs were processed yesterday, including about 5800 in Auckland. This was a significant increase from the prior days, but Bloomfield said people needed to keep coming forward to get tested.
He said testing in Auckland would need to reach about 7,000 per day before any alert level changes. "The number of symptomatic people has dropped...we're supplementing that with the targeted testing of some of our essential workplaces."
He also announced that saliva testing will soon be available
More than 66,000 vaccinations were given yesterday. Over 60% of New Zealanders have had one dose so far, and nearly a third are now fully vaccinated
Ardern says all businesses are eligible for the wage subsidy as long as any part of the country is in level 3 or 4. These businesses still needed to meet the criteria of a 40 per cent reduction revenue
At alert level 2 you are required to wear a mask when using transport, but now you must wear a mask when visiting places such as malls or museums
To reduce risk, public buses will not be able to take standing passengers, this does not apply to school services
Northland residents will be able to travel through Auckland, but would need to have evidence of where they were going
To reduce delays at the border, Ardern asked people to have their paperwork ready