'Mild' Omicron strain still needs to be taken seriously

For a country where just a handful of Covid-19 cases once sparked nation-wide lockdowns, the number of daily infections in the current Omicron outbreak can seem more than a little unnerving. There are now nearly 16-thousand active cases of Covid in Aotearoa, with over 23-hundred yesterday alone. While we are fortunate to be meeting the fight against Omicron with such high vaccination rates, with two people reported yesterday to have died after contracting the virus, shows that the so called 'mild' Covid strain of Omicron is still something to be taken very seriously. So when can we expect to see a peak in the number of cases? And can we ever get rid of it completely? Joining me now is the principal investigator for the government's Covid-19 modelling agency, Te Punaha Matatini, Dr Dion O'Neale