District Health Board’s are racing to get last minute virus testing done before the Government makes its call about whether to come out of lockdown next week; and there appear to be gaps in the Government’s data on Covid-19 that must be filled before a decision is made on reducing the lockdown level, two top advisors say.
1.An economist whose pandemic modeling is being used by Governments around the world believes New Zealanders could be out of lockdown and living under Alert Level 2 within weeks. Rodney Jones of Wigram Capital Advisors, says the daily rate of new cases in this country is expected to fall to single digits by next week.
2.There appear to be gaps in the Government’s data on Covid-19 that must be filled before a decision is made on reducing the lockdown level, two top advisors say. Epidemiologist Michael Baker, who is on the Health Ministry’s Covid-19 technical advisory group, said some of the data he needed to see to be confident of going to alert level 3 may not exist yet.
3.District Health Board’s are racing to get last minute virus testing done before the Government makes its call about whether to come out of lockdown next week.
4.Businesses on the South Island’s West Coast are agitating for permission to reopen early, because their region has had only five cases of Covid-19. The Government will say today what Alert Level 2 and 3 restrictions will look like before deciding on Monday whether the country is ready to move out of Alert Level 4.
5.Germany has announced plans to relax some of the measures imposed to contain the spread of Coronavirus there. Children who are due to take exams will be allowed to return to school from next month while small shops will be able to open their doors next week.
6.Nurses at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital are concerned about a plan to recycle personal protective equipment amid the Covid-19 outbreak.
7.The Council of Trade Unions says with more unemployment looming, Work and Income rules on benefits for people in relationships need to be scrapped. Job seeker benefits can be cut to nothing depending on partners’ incomes.
8.Greenland’s ice sheet shrank more last year than at any time since records began in 1948, according to a new study. The huge drop in surface mass was caused not only by warm temperatures but also atmospheric conditions that have become more frequent due to climate change, researchers found.
9.The police in Wellington are looking for two people who sped from officers and crashed flipping their vehicle onto its roof. The police say the vehicle didn’t stop when asked on Curtis Street in Northland just after 4am this morning and moments later slammed into a bank.
