Management of Auckland’s external border with the world and internal boundary with NZ needs major changes to reflect the city’s shift from Covid-19 elimination to suppression

Monday, November 8th, 2021 | carra86p | 13 Comments

Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, Dr Jennifer Summers, Lesley Gray, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick Wilson*

Analysis of countries with reasonable quality data implies that the risk of Covid-19 infection for most vaccinated international arrivals is typically less than the current risk for Auckland residents. Current MIQ requirements for vaccinated arrivals to Auckland could therefore be dropped for most, without increasing the risk for Aucklanders. It would also be consistent to require tight control measures (vaccination, testing, and potentially some home quarantine) for people travelling from Auckland to other parts of NZ to help maintain elimination in those places (to give time for improved vaccination coverage).

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Using Rapid Antigen Tests to Improve COVID-19 Control in Aotearoa NZ

Thursday, October 7th, 2021 | carra86p | 4 Comments

Dr Jennifer Summers, Assoc Prof James Ussher, Assoc Prof Nikki Moreland, Dr Leah Grout, Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Michael Baker*

Most COVID-19 testing aims to identify infected people. To date, Aotearoa NZ has relied almost exclusively on Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAATs) for this purpose. However, Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) have a complementary role, particularly if COVID-19 infection becomes widespread. In this blog we briefly describe RATs, their performance, and how they could be used to further improve Aotearoa NZ’s COVID-19 response.

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