A baby under one year of age has been infected in the Delta outbreak, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has revealed to the Health Select Committee.
He also revealed the two outstanding contacts who were in the foyer of the Crowne Plaza managed isolation facility have been found and were being spoken to by police.
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With Parliament suspended for the week under alert level 4, the select committees are being used as the main source of scrutiny on the government's handling of the pandemic, and the Delta outbreak in particular.
Bloomfield, responding to a question from National's health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti, told the Health Select Committee the youngest confirmed case from this outbreak was aged under one year old.
Of the first 40 cases identified, about half were teenagers. Bloomfield said he expected that proportion had now changed but did not yet have data for all 148 cases.
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the Delta variant appeared to be infecting younger people at a greater rate than other variants.
He said contact tracers were finding people were at home, and following the rules, but there were some situations where people had made use of the 48 hours to return to their home after the lockdown began.
Crowne Plaza update
National's Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop asked about the six members of the public who had been at the foyer of the Crowne Plaza, and what was being done to find the two people who were there and had not yet been identified.
Hipkins said work was being done to strengthen the Crowne Plaza's barriers.
Bloomfield said police had been reviewing CCTV images to find the two people who had been unidentified.
They had now been found and police were speaking to them, he said.
Someone yesterday self-identified on social media as being potentially one of those people, and police had been investigating that possibility, he said.
Hipkins said there would have been a recent review of the Crowne Plaza including the physical layout and infection control measures.
Asked about surge capacity for contact tracing, Hipkins said the government was dealing with many, many more contacts per case than had been dealt with before.
"The outbreak that we're dealing with at the moment ... these cases are a younger demographic and much more active in large-scale events than anything we've seen previously."
He said that put pressure on the contact tracing system, but the system was dealing with that pressure "remarkably well".
Bloomfield said the demand was being dealt with because of the surge capacity that had been built into the system.
Testing contacts and contact tracing
ACT leader David Seymour asked how many of the more than 15,000 known contacts had returned a test at this point.
Hipkins said he would need to get the latest statistics, but people were not always tested immediately and the number was changing all the time.
Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said from a report this morning, 51 percent of the 369 highest-risk (close-plus) contacts had a result returned with 11 percent of those positive; of the 14,967 close contacts 56 percent had a test result returned with 0.2 percent of those positive.
Of the 405 who were casual-plus contacts, 58 percent had returned a result with none of those being positive.
Hipkins said there was more testing overall of people, and more N95 masks were being rolled out to health workforces. He said the response this time around had been different because of the increased risk of Delta.
He said the metrics for contact tracing set by the Verrall report had been designed for an essentially different virus, and although they were useful they were no longer appropriate to Delta.
He said the understanding of Delta was growing by the day and "so yes we keep the whole system under review, the fact that we haven't released new metrics doesn't mean we haven't been considering very closely some of the things that might need to change and are already changing".
He said the government was moving much faster than they had previously.
Vaccines
Hipkins said that if by the end of the year everyone who is currently eligible got their vaccinations, vaccine stocks would not be used up.
"The question is the timing of when particular shipments get to New Zealand .... we'd like to get more sooner so we've been constantly talking to them about that."
He said they were talking to Pfizer about the possibility of securing booster shots.
Bishop asked why the government had not gone to Pfizer and sought faster and more regular delivery of vaccines, with the possibility of paying extra to secure that.
Hipkins said they had regular conversations with Pfizer, and he was not going to get into the commercial arrangements with Pfizer, but the company had not raised the possibility of the government being able to pay extra for a faster delivery.
Bishop said some vaccinators had reported not being able to fill out the second dose paperwork due to level 4 restrictions, which would be particularly concerning for seniors.
Bloomfield said they would clarify with officials whether that was the case.
He said the government was talking to Janssen and had heard from them a third quarter of the year delivery was not possible.
"At this point we're not in a position to take delivery because they're not in a position to be able to deliver any to us," he said.
Inequity for Māori and Pacific Islanders
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer asked about what funding was being used to address the testing and vaccination of Māori, who face additional risk from the virus.
Hipkins said Māori as a population had not been vaccinated at a rate as fast as other populations, but because Māori life expectancy was lower rates had been similar when considered by age group.
He said the government was concerned about Māori vaccine coverage, particularly as New Zealand approached the date of opening up vaccines to younger age groups.
He said there had been significant vaccine provision at marae, including for non-Māori. He acknowledged the role of marae in playing a leadership role in the vaccine programme.
Ngarewa-Packer asked about whether funding would be increased to Hauora providers, which were over delivering. Hipkins said he would have to speak to the finance minister about that.
This morning, Finance Minister Grant Robertson fielded questions about the government's spending.
Ngarewa-Packer asked for an investigation into whether the low rate of overall Māori vaccination was linked to the amount being spent.
Hipkins said the vaccination rates in age brackets showed it was not a matter of inequitable provision.
More primary care was coming on board every week to help with vaccine delivery, he said.
Green Party MP Dr Elizabeth Kerekere asked about support for local providers who were facing increased levels of racism.
Hipkins said the government had been very focused since the beginning of the Covid-19 response to avoid apportioning blame, and to challenge those when they arose. He asked for such instances to be raised with officials.
"It's the virus that's the problem, not human beings," he said.
Pressures on the health system
Hipkins said one of the lessons learned from the lockdown in Auckland last August was that the government stepped out of lockdown too early, and had to increase it again.
They did not want to repeat that, he said.
Hipkins said the overall health workforce was still under pressure, despite some improvements being made including some health workers being allowed to come through the border.
National MP Simon Watts asked how many ICU nurses had been brought through the border, and Hipkins said he did not have that detail.
"You should be across this," Watts said.
Hipkins said New Zealand did have a health system that needed to change, and that would take time. He noted New Zealand's approach had meant that it had not been overwhelmed and non-Covid-19 procedures had been able to continue at a similar rate.
Bloomfield also noted New Zealand has a lower number of ICU beds per capita than other countries, particularly Australia.
