COVID-19 update 7 September 2021

>> Tena koutou. He mihi ki a koutou katoa.

I will hand over to Dr Bloomfield for an update on case numbers but first update on vaccine supply.

When they dealt outbreak began we had a choice, continue on with a plan designed to very closely match our supply in New Zealand or to stand up additional surge capacity. We chose to stand up extra capacity and we have experienced demand at 180% of what we planned for.

At our peak in recent weeks we've been vaccinating more people per capita than countries like the UK, the US, Australia and Canada were at their peaks. However, to sustain these record high levels in the latter part of September we needed to obtain additional supplies. This will supplement our stocks and tell our large shipments arrive in October.

As such the government quickly reached out to Pfizer and overseas partners to see if we could ring forward orders or purchase vaccines from other countries. These rapid negotiations have been taking place behind the scenes over the last two weeks. To say they have been complex would be an understatement.

Without going into all the details, such a range require indemnity issues to be resolved, approaches to ensure regulatory approvals apply and extensive multi-party negotiations not to mention complex logistical organisation. As a result of these efforts we are finalising arrangements that secure additional supply in September. This will enable us to maintain our extraordinary vaccination rates throughout September until our bulk deliveries land in October.

We are still waiting for final contracts to be signed so I can't confirm specific countries or details on quantities. They are however Pfizer doses and we will share further information as soon as we are able.

 I would also add that these arrangements will enable us to continue our support for Pacific neighbours as they look to extend their vaccination programs to the 12+ age group.

In the meantime I wish to say thank you to those countries and their leaders and all the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and trade staff involved sloughs far.

While we wait for extra information for now I have one simple message for New Zealanders, please get vaccinated. These are the coming ways to push our vaccination rates as high as possible so we can protect our loved ones from COVID and avoid having to use Lovell for lockdowns in the future -- level IV lockdowns. Make a booking or contact your local GP or show up at a local drive- through centre if there is one near you. All of those options are completely free.

 I will now hand over to Dr Bloomfield.

>> Tena koutou katoa,

21 new cases in the Auckland region, one additional case yet to be determined whether it is a border or community case.

 The total number of cases associated with the current outbreak is now 841 and of those, 147 are deemed to have recovered.

Ongoing investigations by our public health units and in particular Auckland Regional Public Health Service resulted in the total number of unlinked cases falling from 33 yesterday to 24 today, the work continues and the number will continue to fall. While finding epidemiological links can take some time, especially when there is a small likelihood of exposure at this point, there may be no clear links to a source but invariably with whole genome sequencing and further discussion, most of these cases can be linked.

Analysis of yesterday's 20 cases shows that 17 or 85% were contacts of known cases and 16 or 80% were household contacts who were already isolating. Just four people were potentially infectious in the community with eight exposure events between them. None were an essential worker workplaces and none of the exposure events occurred after those people were asked to isolate. Thank you to them.

 Clearly all the numbers are moving in the right direction, which is reassuring.

We still have a number of people in hospital with 39 cases, all in the Auckland region, still in hospital, and of these six are in intensive care or high dependency units and four currently require ventilation.

On contact tracing, 37,971 individual contacts in the national database, this is a drop from yesterday and includes adding some additional contacts but also some work to reconcile duplicates so the total number, the net number has reduced. Around 91% of all contacts identified have had a test and our public health units around the country are continuing to follow up those with outstanding testing results.

Yesterday 7255 swabs were protest in our labs and around 5800 swabs were taken across Metro Auckland yesterday, good to see an increase yesterday.

As I noted yesterday, testing remain central to us being confident the outbreak is under control in Tamaki Makaurau. If you have symptoms, please get tested. In Auckland or indeed wherever you are in the country.

We are accelerating the rollout of saliva testing as an option for more workers. We are currently finalising a contract with a further saliva testing provider and expect this will be soon an option for workers who might need weekly testing because they are travelling across the Auckland boundary.

The details of how that saliva based testing will be available are being firmed up now and it will be complementary to the PCR- based laser pharyngeal swabbing.

More than 840 border workers have signed up to do saliva testing and this will become an option for more groups over time including healthcare workers and we will use it as part of our testing of returnees in managed isolation.

Finally on our vaccine rollout, this continues at pace with more than 66,000 vaccinations delivered yesterday. Over 60% of eligible New Zealanders aged 12 and over have now had their first dose and nearly 1/3 are fully vaccinated. It's a massive effort to all involved and I want to thank them again, as well as of course everyone who has rolled up their sleeve and done their part to keep themselves and the wider community say.

 Finally on the topic of vaccination a special shout out from a mum who asked us to share a positive story about her son's COVID-19 vaccination experts, he has a health condition which makes him anxious, he was seen by a wonderful nurse who gave him his first vaccination.

His mother says the nurse, whose name is Louise, and all the staff at the vaccine centre made the experience a wonderful, relaxing one for him and help take his anxiety way. She says they are awesome and their kind approach made a positive experience for the young member of the disability community and I know that positive experience is one that has been for many New Zealand who have been vaccinated to date.

>> Thank you Dr Bloomfield.

Yesterday we announced a move to alert level II, because delta is more transmissible and dangerous, we've had to create a stronger alert level II and strengthen the rules to take account of that.

 As I said yesterday some of these measures will form part of our new normal. So long as we had COVID in the world and seek to avoid the use of lockdowns in the future, things like QR code scanning and the use of masks will be some of the ways we can continue to keep the virus at bay. I want to touch on a few of the common questions and in some cases misunderstandings that have arisen since the alert level announcement yesterday.

The first is key and it's on the Wage Subsidy Scheme are all businesses remain allergy to supply 48 as long as any part of the country is on level III or four. That means for instance a business in Queenstown in level II can still apply. You still need to meet the eligibility criteria of a 40% decline in revenue but I want to assure businesses that the COVID economic support stay in place as long as for instance Auckland is at higher alert levels and that is in part recognition of the fact that one part of the country being at the alert level can have a knock-on effect to other parts of the country. That should also take account of those in the hospitality sector have raised concerns over whether some of the Indoor Venues Make It Viable for Them to.

On mask wearing at alert level II you are required to wear a face covering when using public transport, aeroplanes, taxis or visiting a healthcare or aged care facility, those rules are well known.

The major changes you must wear a mask if you are inside any retail business including supermarkets, which people have been practising recently but also now you are able to travel and visit them, malls and takeaway food chores and shops.

You must also wear a mask in public venues such as museums and libraries but obviously not swimming pools, even if you are a spectator. We know there are places where it would be impractical for customers of visitors to wear face covering such as hospitality venues like bars and residues -- restaurants. And exercising with a mask and be challenging so the face covering requirement doesn't apply to clients in gyms either.

 In general if you are around people you don't know it's a good idea to wear a mask as much as possible.

Another changed capable safer level II is limiting the number of people can travel on a bus, train or ferry. Delta and indeed COVID love is a packed bus and we've seen it in the past with some of our cases. We need to ensure we have appropriate spacing. To do that these services won't be able to carry standing passages. It won't apply to dedicated school transport services. Think ahead and plan your journey, there may not be enough seats available on the trip you would normally take, you may have to wait for the next service. If you travel at peak time you might want to consider whether you alter your journey time to be sure. Continue to be respectful of drivers and other public transport staff and where a face covering and keep a record of your journey and please, do not travel if you are sick, get attached. -- A test.

The good people of Northland have raised queries about transiting through Northland -- Auckland, because the error is cut off from the country while Auckland remains at level IV. You will be able to transit if you need to but you will need to travel through without stopping and with proof of where you are going. There is not unlimited movement though.

 If you need to travel for work, you will be able to transit through Auckland and I covered that yesterday. Similarly if you need to travel for personal regions -- reasons including attending a funeral or a wedding or civil union or attend an education entity you can do all those things as well. If you can bring some evidence of why and make sure you keep driving. Through Auckland, not through the checkpoints.

The principle is we want to allow those in Northland to experience level II like the rest of the country but we need people to play it safe and follow the rules. The last thing we wanted someone picking up COVID in Auckland and take it back to Northland. We know that borders can be busy and we anticipate there may be slightly more traffic at the boundary although the reasons for travel out of Auckland remain the same as they have been.

 Either way police have planned for this so I would remain travellers to have their appropriate documents on them to speed up the process. If you don't need to travel or don't have a legitimate reason, please don't.

And finally please as always be patient and be kind. I will now take questions.

>> Where are we at with our vaccinations, any updates on that?

>> Last I checked we had half a million doses in country, while I'm talking I will try to get the latest numbers. Certainly enough that we can keep rolling out as we intend and with that extra search going as well. What we are indicating now is we have secured additional supply. We are finalising the contractual arrangements and I can give you more detail, quantities and where they are coming from, in the coming days.

>> Is at a multicountry deal?

>> There is more than one involved. While we are finalising contracts there are details we won't share but they are Pfizer doses. They meeting all our regulatory requirements and standards that they will enable us to keep through September maintaining surge capacity.

>> The uncertainty is because, can you give us assurance that we might find ourselves in this situation again?

>> These circumstances have been particular to the outbreak, 180% more doses delivered and what had been planned for and the limitation we would set was the supply we had available in September. We made a call, we wanted to keep the search going, vaccinate as many people as possible and do everything we could to secure additional supply. That's what we have been focused on. That's what we believe we've been able to do pending a few final contracts. First you knew the delta outbreak was inevitable, did we not properly planned for that?

>> As I have said this is a matter of weeks. During the September period we always knew we did have some limitations on our supply before we saw all of our remaining doses delivered in October. Our view was when delta arrived on our shores that we need to surge up those vaccines even if we didn't have the supply available and work to do everything we could to meet the demand. There was never a chance of running out but we didn't want to damp down the demand. 

>> You can't say how many you have secured, but how many did we seek to tide us over?

>> We had planned for roughly 350,000 doses per week but what we saw when we provided extra capacity was demand go well over half a million a week. That is the difference between the supply we had and what we were seeing. We have worked very hard and I want to acknowledge the teams have worked on this to continue to meet that huge demand, even though we had those limitations, simply not enough doses being supplied to us.

>> Can you tell us how much money if any this deal will cost?

>> No, I can't, and nor do I anticipate that is something we will give too much detail away on because those would be commercial arrangements. We have heard people talking about swaps, it's not as straightforward as that, they require purchase agreements in both directions. There is no such thing as a simple swap. One country purchasers and the other country purchasers back.

>> Is the government sending money...

>> I won't get into that sort of detail here and now. In terms of quantum we won't share that information.

>> I don't care about the number, yes or no?

>> There is a purchase arrangement in place, you have to buy them even if the country is taking them back in the future.

>> Dr Bloomfield, how many saliva checks are being processed every week?

>> The figure I gave that we have over 800, 830 border workers and most of them will be on saliva testing every two days. That is from our border workforce which has gone beyond managed isolation quantitative to a number of ports and airports around the country. There are other employers doing their own saliva testing, and New Zealand, Fisher and Paykel are a couple. What I would say is a reminder, the only difference is the way the sample is connected collected, it is saliva in a cup rather than a phase oh laryngeal swab.

>> Are they know capacity restraints?

>> There are no capacity restraints with our current provider providing across the border, but we are finalising a contract with an additional provider to support that new surveillance testing for people who will be going across the boundary, the Auckland boundary, and also to support some of the focused surveillance testing if needed across some of those employers in the Auckland region in the next few weeks.

>> 682,000 vaccines in stock, 510,000 of those are at sites across the country.

>> Dr Bloomfield, how many of the unlinked cases in the outbreak have been under investigation for more than await with still no resolution? And have many new variants emerged in the community that don't have a clear genomic link to the other cases?

>> In response to the second question, all the cases have been sequenced in the outbreak and the vast majority so far except where the sequencing failed because there wasn't enough RNA material have been clearly linked to the single introduction of the delta case. And furthermore there are a number of variations happening that are helping to map the timeline of the outbreak. When we talk about the case is not being epidemiology clearly linked, most of them are linked to other cases, it's just there is no clear description of how they might link into one of the existing outbreaks or an earlier case. It doesn't mean there is not sometimes a strong suspicion or that it is preventing the control of the outbreak.

>> The cases under investigation are they cases who have popped up over the last week or so? Or we can't find the map?

>> Summer cases and the ones that are more historical from the start of the outbreak we are less concerned about. We are more interested in the latter cases and making sure we can find out just how the first person, if it's an individual or sometimes they are a member of a wider family, for example of our 21 cases today, eight of those, or seven of those are new cases and one whanau, finding out who was infected first in that whanau and linking it back to an exposure and there is great work going on, identifying whether link is.

>> Seeing they are linked cases, is there any chance of going down to level III for Auckland?

>> What is of interest, we had four people infectious in the community but none of their exposure events were after they'd been identified and asked to isolate. It is also when we find those exposure events and the appropriate actions are put in place, including isolating and testing people, making sure there is no onward spread from those cases.

>> Just curious, (inaudible).

>> I can confirm what the Prime Minister said yesterday, I looked through the advice in the public health risk assessment my team did, on NSW and travel back from all other states in Australia at that point, and the advice was to retain predeparture testing when people are travelling from states with cases which included Queensland at the time. We had deployed for people travelling from Victoria if you recall. In the case of NSW, there was a window for people to come back on repatriated flights, but having given advice and the government accepted that advice to bring those people into managed isolation from where they would be both in managed isolation and going through the usual testing regime there, the advice of my public health team was, there was more risk in sending them out for a predeparture test rather than having them isolate as they had been at home for a couple of weeks because Sydney was in lockdown and travelling straight to the airport. That was the advice, not to add a further predeparture test for those travelling from Sydney.

>> Your concern was not about getting the test back in the period, as was about the state of the (inaudible) in NSW and the chances of catching delta.

>> It was a mixture. As you pointed out these flights were being put on quickly, people had to book and there was a short window for people to get back. The considered view of our public health... They would have to have gone out and got the test and they were trying to book whatever flight became available. Most importantly the considered view of the public health team was that because they were coming into managed isolation with a rigorous testing regime then there wasn't a requirement for a predeparture test and on balance my team's view was that there was greater risk in them going out, being around other people, in the community, then there was staying isolated and travelling directly to the airport.

>> To come back to the question of... Given the messaging you've given about the risk of transmission on flights, and the reduction you are seeing a predeparture testing, with a new returnee, given he tested positive, is it likely a predeparture test would have picked him up? Chevron it's possible but this is the thing about predeparture testing. If someone is early on in their infection they may not pick it up. And secondly, in the time after they've had the test they could become infected. That's why on the flights, those flights from Australia as with any flights coming in, good infection prevention in control procedures and the many thousands of people have come from Australia in that period, they have only been three cases in managed isolation and this was one of them.

>> My recollection of the timeline of that case based on the person we think may have been the source, there is a chance they could have got their test in the earlier part of the 72 hours before their exposure to that individual. I think the only point I would add is as Dr Bloomfield said, we stuck to the advice, we didn't vary what we got on predeparture testing from NSW.

>> You confirmed that the government did not try to source vaccines from any other third parties outside of the schedule from Pfizer put forward before the delta outbreak?

>> At that point we had enough for 50,000 vaccines per day, 350,000 across the course of the week and within a 3-4 week period we had enormous deliveries across the course of October. We had always planned our vaccine rollout to incorporate limitations to supply through those weeks into the big surge in October. At that point we were meeting the demand that was there, we knew that when we had tight supply, but it was only for a matter of weeks.

>> So, we have 680,000 in the country, when is the next...

>> We tend to get our deliveries once a week, at the latter end of the beginning of the week.

>> Another 300

>> Another 300,000 arriving in the next week? 

>> I'm not telling you we will run out today, I'm telling you can meet the demand.

>> I'm curious about this detail -- deal you have worked out, once the contract is signed, is it a simple matter of finding a plane and it can be on its way within 24-hour is? 

>> If only this process was that simple. There are no words for the complexity of these agreements. They are not easily delivered. I lot of work has gone in and I'll be happy to share more detail around that, it will be easier when I can explain. 

>> The logistics side?

>> The logistics side and the regulatory site, we have an approval process not just around Pfizer, it's down to point of manufacturing, batches. We have to go through that. It's a complex arrangement.

>> Australia didn't seem to find it very difficult to get the doses from the UK. 

>> I doubt you are asking them the same questions. You would find these things are not straightforward. 

>> Can you promise that anyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one?

>> Yes, we avoided more than enough for every eligible New Zealander, and we have ordered enough for those who may not currently be eligible but may become eligible. We've ordered enough to even ensure we can supply other countries as well. We have ordered enough, that it's not the issue. It is in some countries but not here. It will come down to people coming forward.

>> Can I go back to the people who haven't had a question yet. Chevron

>> Will the government make legislative changes to ensure the data won't be misused, will it be protected under the LOCHI

>> Forgive me, I was meant to go away and found out whether that additional protection was required, that information is only available if the individual makes it available to us in the course of contact tracing. There are already quite a few protections in place, you asked about legislative protection, let me follow up on that for you.

>> On recordkeeping what happens if a person refuses to sign on, can a person refuse their services?

>> One of the things we debated was the degree to which we wanted to create those situations for a business owner to end up feeling like they had to be the enforcer. That is one of the difficulties with mandatory recordkeeping. The places we are doing it are those places we consider it the most appropriate because it's harder to do things like wear masks and have other mitigations but they happen to be places whereby large people often keep records. When you are going into hospitality often people keep records for reservation purposes or hairdressers and beauty salons, places where recordkeeping is part of what they do. There are ways businesses can incorporate recordkeeping in a way that is seamless and part of their day today.

>> On isolation trials later this year, how is the outbreak affected the timeline of that?

>> We are still doing the work, we had a meeting last week, the trial for home isolation wasn't due to start until the latter part of the year. We are doing the work but of course you wouldn't undertake such a trial if you were in a level III or level IV environment. We are taking that into account. The rest of the work needs to continue regardless, it's around arrangements for rapid testing at the border, vaccine passports, all the things that need to be done regardless of whatever restrictions are in place and that work is progressing well. Sometime in the future after ministers get another update on vaccine passports for instance I will share on that but I'm pleased with the work that is being done.

>> I'm going to take an orderly queue if I can.

>> The National Party are calling for the release of the information plan saying this would be valuable for the DHB, do you think they should be made public?

>> One thing I know the select committees are talking about, whether they bring forward people to give their view on those rollouts, I think it would be helpful if we provided the ability for Ministry of Health to talk to some of those plans. You would see we are releasing the data, you will see how we are progressing, when it comes to the plants themselves I see no reason why we wouldn't share that detail. What I would say that some as being delivered by providers within DHBs on the ground, we are trying to ensure there is enough funding and support for them to develop those plans they know will work locally. We may not always have every single innovation they are undertaking but you can see in the numbers whether we are making progress.

>> Happy to make available our May RE and Pacifica plans and the documentation. The important thing is how those translate into the operational delivery as part of the DHB plans they provide to us to achieve what is in our national plans.

>> At the moment we have comparable rates without over 55 Maori who have come forward to be vaccinated but less comparable for our younger people. That is telling us where we need to be targeted.

>> In relation to the legislation are you confident you've had adequate consultation with Maori?

>> We've had the same process that any bill goes through where we've had submissions and the chance for the public or any community organisation or anyone to participate in sharing their view. I would expect of course we would have also the outreach you would expect as well. We haven't shortened that process. The only thing we are looking to shorten is the part that Parliament goes through after the public opinion engaged. I haven't got a list from the select committee process specifically or what justice did before had but they've been working on this law change for a number of years.

>> Will the law prevent overreaching for (inaudible)?

>> It is not just up to submitters to ensure that's the case, it's up as ministers and Cabinet to get the balance right, that we are targeting areas where we have a genuine concern that we have a gap in the law without seeing any overreach. I think all New Zealanders know we have to strike that balance.

>> Dr Bloomfield, what levels of testing would you need to see in Auckland before making a decision about alert levels and what measures have been taken to get testing up to that level?

>> On the testing rates in Auckland I think I said yesterday on the day before, the estimates we have is at least we want to see 7000 tests per day, which would equate to a good proportion of symptomatic people in Auckland. At the moment it is under that, probably because the number of symptomatic people has dropped and is continuing to drop. We are supplementing that with the targeted testing of some of our essential workplaces and that will start from tomorrow. That is an addition of course to the testing of all those who are looking after the people either in hospital or the quarantine facility and the testing of people crossing the boundary. The number we are looking forward be a minimum of 7000 swabs per day. The other question you had was the middle more case, this person is part of a family I mentioned earlier on where eight of the 11 people in that household have tested positive and through conversations with all the people in that household, Auckland Regional Public Health Service quite confident about where the link is some time ago to the outbreak and how that infection may have got into the household. Just confirming that at the moment.

>> As I recall we have great compliance level IV that family. Jessica and the general and then Ben.

>> Antigen testing to be part of the toolbox, why is that not considered?

>> We have asked our expert testing advisory group to take a look at theirs, particularly if it is something you might overlay with testing at the border, if you for instance part of a pilot might be having vaccinated travellers being tested on re-entry before they go into isolation. We are exploring those possibilities but antigen testing relative to PCR testing, there are big differences so that's why we rely on our experts for that.

>> Where rapid antigen testing has been used and it's useful if you have infection in the community, in our case with an elimination approach, PCR-based testing whether through saliva or swabs is the way to go. As dejected general I get to improve the importation of rapid antigen tests and I can done so we can trial it as part of our preparation for reconnecting you at the border -- New Zealand at the border while people are going into MiQ to see how useful it is in that setting and how it can be implemented on a large scale as some people come through the border into the country as part of a possible mix of things we might have in the future, along with vaccination status.

>> Something ready to use in case we did get outbreaks more widespread in the community? Wouldn't that be better to have it ready to go?

>> It is not difficult to stand it up quickly but to date there hasn't been, and this has been the expert advice, it is not appropriate to use rapid antigen testing in a setting which New Zealand has had with essentially no community transmission. And when we have an outbreak we want to use PCR testing to find every single case.

>> Is one of the things we've asked the professor about and he suggested looking forward to the future and incorporating it as part of our trials. I haven't had any experts suggest we should have been using it as part of the elimination strategy. Saliva testing, you've seen we are integrating it now because it has that PCR quality.

>> There's been a couple of questions for you Dr Bloomfield, are you considering testing all visitors to hospitals in Auckland when they arrive on site and if not, what is being done to ensure what happened before doesn't happen again? 

>> On the first question, that is not the intention. Under alert level IV, whether Auckland or elsewhere there is a set of procedures put in place for anyone being admitted or arriving at the emergency department and visitors as well to check for high index of suspicion and get a declaration from someone about symptoms they may have or if they've been at a location of interest or are a contact of the case. In the case of the middle more situation that's what happened. I have seen from my colleague who sent me a detailed description of the events that happened and I'm satisfied that the clinicians made good decisions based on the information they had available at the time and had IPC infection prevention and control advice throughout. A couple of points there was a delay in the process and that's the area the DHB will look at and see what might have been behind that.

>> What's the harm in testing everyone who comes on site? How concerning, how high is the risk of transmission for that eight hours that one case was there with other patients?

>> It's not operationally feasible to test everyone coming into the hospital, some of whom are coming because of trauma related admissions or coming to be obsessed for conditions that are unrelated to COVID-19. There is a process. They might be having a baby. There are red and green lanes, depending on whether there is suspicion someone could have COVID. In terms of the potential for others to be infected, as I said, and I've had confirmation of this, there was good infection prevention control throughout to minimise risk of others being infected and subsequently there has been a precautionary approach to standing down staff and testing other patients who may have been exposed to make sure.

>> No-one was wearing any PPE.

>> People were wearing appropriate PPE for the circumstances where that person was being assessed and managed at the time.

>> Back to Fridays attack, different voices coming out including the Australian (inaudible) who assessed the man in 2018, he said that the man offered for a surveillance approach over treatment (inaudible), you would have more information than the public. Do you and your heart of hearts believe any reader to bill at a function may have -- rehabilitation may have worked on the man?

>> I am not qualified to make that judgement. What you can see, for instance all the information put out and there was a comprehensive statement made by Corrections, they had exposure engagement with the individual over a three-year period and one of the things repeatedly in there, mental health support was available and offered, there were a range of other forms of engagement offered that were quite difficult. And the engagement was difficult for most agencies that had cause for engagement. I was not involved in assessing at that level but what I see as a consistent theme of agencies who have done what they done and corrections have said what they went over and above what they would normally be expected to do to engage and change the pathway this individual was on and found it difficult.

>> In July 2020 he was moved to the (inaudible) prison and had oversight, when you saw that did you seek assurance he was kept apart from terrorists that ACLEI

>> That wasn't something that came to my mind is an issue because corrections manage those issues so carefully. I have not asked the question but the reason that individual, I assume the reason they were moved, when you have particularly forgot behaviours, I assume that was a linkage, my recollection is that occurred after the assault on corrections staff.

>> Judith Colman said the government itself had days and weeks to give businesses any indication of announcing yesterday, level II.5 or as you describe it, the Delta level II, why did the government wait until yesterday when the measures are coming in tomorrow when it could have given some road map prior to that.

>> Well, we didn't. Mask rules were determined before we had the outbreak. There is implementation time required. So we chose to use the point at which people were engaging with mask used to share what those rules were. Some of them haven't been ravel -- relevant to level II, some people would not have engage with the new rules on wearing masks. On the scanning, that was released by Minister Hipkins as well. If you are not out about you are not engaging with those rules. The ones that were not, two things, to changes, Dcap of 54 indoor, the advice was to drop it down. The second change was more physical distancing and public facilities, we have that with shopping and we extended it to museums and libraries. They have the protocol and they will do a recalibration. I except for hospitality that was a change. We did reach out to hospitality representatives but there wasn't a huge amount of time because the public health advice we get is in real time. There is not a huge amount of literature around transmission in delta. What is available we have supplemented what we have seen throughout the outbreak and we often make those decisions in real-time. I understand why this happened in that way but when we have been able to give advance warning, we have, other times, unfortunately it will be the period we make the ad announcement.

>> Dr Bloomfield, did you advise the government...

>> I verbally received that late Sunday afternoon.

>> Can we get clarification on mask use, do you have to wear mask while singing at church? And you clarified at the top of this that it is not a requirement to wear them at restaurants, is that a rule change from yesterday?

>> No.

>> It says you should wear one if possible if eating and drinking. 

>> We accept that when the primary purposes is eating and drinking, people are not required to wear masks but we encourage people as much as possible to wear mask. My recollection for things like social gatherings for which we have classified church, we have mandatory recordkeeping there. We are asking people to keep mandatory records whether a funeral, wedding, a social gathering, whether it is church, we want to know who is there because we don't have the accompanying requirement about mask use. We are encouraging mask use.

>> Is it possible to release what you got from your colleague?

>> Happy to provide further detail on the outline and the timeline.

>> We might wrap up.

>> The Northland corridor, 10 people south of Auckland travel through to visit Northland?

>> As I understand it the focus has been on those in Northland coming out. We would have to make sure there is the ability who for work purposes, we would want to make sure that is reciprocal, I would check whether the order work has been done. It is not a free for all, we've narrowed it down to essential social events, work purposes and so on. We just want to limit the possibility that people may stop in Auckland. We have the same, again, light touch for the northern corridor. We asked people to carry evidence and they can be stopped at the border.

>> Flights?

>> Flights have been moving, people have been checked at airports, to check they are travelling for essential purposes. Most flights out of Northland are going through Auckland. But of course that's the only ability to go onward.

>> (Inaudible) not stop in Auckland?

>> Once you are transiting in the cheques are as you come into the airport. If you are doing cheques at Northland itself, you are asking in reverse, to get into Northland.

>> Can you bypass Auckland and get to Queensland?

>> I would have to check. -- Queenstown.

>> They are disadvantaged by having Auckland sandwiched in between but we have focused on weddings, funerals and work. A direct flight would resolve those problems, put in a bid to Air New Zealand. Thank you, everybody.