The Bay of Plenty District Health Board says Covid case numbers are often lower on the weekends. Photo / George Novak
The Bay of Plenty District Health Board says Covid case numbers are often lower on the weekends. Photo / George Novak
The Bay of Plenty may be "at" or "close to" the Omicron peak, the local district health board says.
A Covid-19 modeller agrees and says it is "quite possible" the region has reached peak cases or is "just about" to.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Health data shows the region's Covid casesin the past 14 days have seen a "peak, dip, increase".
Yesterday, 804 new Covid-19 community cases were reported in the Bay of Plenty District Health Board region with 29 people in hospital. The Ministry of Health also reported an additional three people with the virus from the Bay of Plenty had died.
Toi Te Ora Public Health on Friday reported 498 new cases in Tauranga City, 174 in Western Bay of Plenty, 162 in Whakatāne District, 51 in Kawerau and 71 in Ōpōtiki.
There were 8218 active cases in the board's region as of Friday.
Toi Te Ora said with differences in reporting systems, report timeframes, and as case information was updated there may be some discrepancies in numbers such as with Ministry of Health data.
Bay of Plenty District Health Board Covid-19 incident controller Trevor Richardson said the trend of the region's reported case numbers indicated "we may be at or close to the Omicron peak in community cases this week".
"We will only know for sure when the peak has passed."
But the peak would not occur at the same time across the whole region as some areas were later to get cases initially.
Case numbers in the Eastern Bay were still increasing, he said.
"Hospitalisation of Covid cases lags behind community case numbers, and we may see hospital occupancy continue to increase before levelling off and reducing."
Bay of Plenty District Health Board Covid-19 incident controller Trevor Richardson. Photo / George Novak
Richardson said reported daily case numbers were expected to show "quite a bit of variation" and the board could not place "too much emphasis" on one or two days of results.
"Often weekend numbers are lower than on weekdays, for example."
Richardson said the board was watching Auckland case numbers and hospitalisations to give it an idea of what might be expected locally. It also looked at Waikato which was close to the region in the outbreak phase.
"It appears to be moving down the country, but different areas will experience different peaks and timings due to many different factors such as population behaviour and density, adherence to public health recommendations, vaccination rates etc."
Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank. Photo / Supplied
Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank said it was "quite possible" the Bay of Plenty region had reached peak cases or was "just about" to.
The comments were made based on his own data of the midland region. This encompassed several district health boards in the central North Island including the Lakes, Bay of Plenty and Waikato.
"If you look at the cases for that region ... the number of cases is lower than it was seven days ago. And that's generally a reasonable indicator that things have peaked.
"The numbers will bounce up and down but I would expect the trend to start to come downward from here on."
Plank said case numbers would "bounce around" due to how many people decided to get tested on a particular day, which was often lower on the weekend.
He said a dip and then a rise again could be "a weekend effect".
But in his view, the MInistry of Health data looked "pretty flat".
"They will bounce around from day to day obviously but I don't think there's really a sign of it going steeply upwards again."
Te Punaha Matatini principal investigator Dr Dion O'Neale. Photo / Supplied
Te Punaha Matatini principal investigator and Covid Modelling Aotearoa project lead Dr Dion O'Neale said the Ministry of Health data showed case numbers had done a "peak, dip, increase".
He suspected this happened after there was a change in Covid testing.
"Once RATs became available, a bunch of people rushed out and got them.
"These people weren't able to get PCR tests previously and then suddenly they could get a RAT and we saw this big surge.
"In the background, people's inclination to seek a test has fallen off we suspect," he said anecdotally.
People not reporting their test results could also be a reason, he said.
"We know there are a bunch of people who are buying their own RATs ... test positive and then just don't log the result."
This was especially the case for those under 12 years old, he said.
But given the dip and then rise in cases again, O'Neale suspected the region had not hit the peak of Omicron yet.
