Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says NZ may not get back to zero cases of Covid-19, but vaccination is making all the difference.
"We may not get back to zero," he told Morning Report.
"The important thing is we're going to keep finding any infections and basically continue to contact trace, test, isolate people so that we stop the virus circulating in the community, and that is the aim."
Bloomfield said vaccinations will help control delta and are the key to getting back to the freedoms NZ used to enjoy in alert level 1.
"I don't think a level 1 scenario with Delta necessarily means a series of zero cases, because what we've got now of course, is vaccination.
"And so what we're aiming to do now is get on top of this outbreak, which we've done, and continue to vaccinate and get that vaccination rate up over 90 percent.
"That's absolutely our new means whereby we will be able to get back to the freedoms we had under level 1, and we're all keen to do that."
Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo: Pool / 2021 Getty Images
Bloomfield also said he could not give an R Value, the rate the virus spreads, for the current outbreak due to the small number of cases, but it was estimated at 0.4 a couple of weeks ago.
"When you've got so few cases, at this point in the outbreak, you can't really model the R value anymore."
