Niamh Linstrom, 25, moved from Mount Maunganui to Byron Bay early last year. Photo / NZME
"It's running wild."
This is how Niamh Linstrom, who moved from Mount Maunganui to Australia's Byron Bay, has described the explosion of Covid-19 cases in New South Wales.
The 25-year-old says "almost everyone" she knows in the coastal holiday hot spot has the virus or has been infected with it.
Australian media is reporting 70,000 cases across the last 48 hours in New South Wales and another 38,625 cases on Friday.
The NSW government is now set to announce multiple restrictions in a bid to control the cases which would include shutting nightclubs and banning singing and dancing in pubs.
Singing and dancing will be prohibited in hospitality venues (including pubs, clubs, nightclubs, bars and restaurants), entertainment facilities and major recreation facilities. The restriction will not apply to weddings or for students, instructors and performers in the settings listed above.
There would also be a pause on certain non-elective surgeries.
New Zealand recorded 35 new community cases yesterday, of which 13 were in the Bay of Plenty, two in Rotorua and one in Taupō.
Linstrom, who moved to Byron Bay early last year, first noticed the increase in cases when many of her friends tested positive after attending a gig at a local hall.
"One person there was positive which turned into 62 cases from that night. It hit my friend group pretty hard with about half of them testing positive."
Common symptoms experienced among those in her friend group included headaches, body aches and cold sweats lasting for a couple of days.
Some experienced loss of smell and taste which stuck around for more than two weeks.
Linstrom said she was asymptomatic at the time but a blood test had since shown Covid-19 antibodies in her blood.
"I must have had it at some point."
Queues to get a PCR Covid-19 test often lasted up to four hours and now the government was urging people not to get tested unless they were symptomatic or living with a positive case, she said.
"Everyone is trying to get their hands on rapid antigen tests which are proving difficult to get your hands on, sold out everywhere. A couple of people have ordered bulk from overseas and are selling them on the sly."
Linstrom said her phone was "always pinging" with notifications from the NSW check-in app stating a positive case had been at the same venue as her at the same time.
"I honestly think the government is going for the whole herd immunity thing. At the start, they were strict on isolating, but since then have decreased the isolation period from two weeks to seven days because it's just out of control."
She felt fear surrounding Covid had "seriously decreased" since Omicron's arrival due to symptoms seeming more mild compared with Delta.
Despite the outbreak, Linstrom said most venues were still open, however, it depended on if they had enough staff test negative for Covid-19.
"You can still surf, travel and go out to bars. There are very little restrictions since regional travel opened up." Her comments were made before NSW yesterday announced that restrictions would be reimposed.
Meanwhile in Sydney, Caroline Fleming, a former NZME journalist who worked at the Bay of Plenty Times, tested positive for Covid-19 on the first day of 2022.
Fleming, who grew up in Rotorua, moved to Sydney last March for a job in public relations.
Fleming, who is fully vaccinated, said she was happy it had happened despite the Omicron "chaos".
"This is the view of a lot of Kiwis in Australia, we think New Zealand needs to just let it happen cause the vax rate is so high... it's so like chaos but it's the reality of what's gonna happen everywhere," she said, expressing her opinion.
In Fleming's view: "Once you're vaxxed it almost has to run free for anyone to ever be free... we're going to be immune at the end of this.
"We're getting it done, I want New Zealand to get it done so we can come home... no one can keep it out forever."
Fleming said she did not know anyone with Covid-19 until the week before Christmas when "it went wild" with everyone being social, shopping and restrictions lifted.
"It was just so easy to be a close contact and get it... everyone who hasn't got it right now is just waiting to get it."
Fleming started to feel sick on New Year's Eve night and tested positive the next day.
"A rapid test was so hard to get... my boyfriend got up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go try and buy some and he had to go to five shops... it was so expensive."
Fleming went to get a PCR test on January 2 but "it was so hot, maybe 30C, and people with Covid were lining up for like 500m... we would have been waiting in it for hours and I was too sick".
Fleming said she did not want Kiwis to be afraid of Covid-19. Her experience was "it's just like a sh**** cold".
In her view: "If you have the vax you'll be much more likely to be able to manage it at home."
Fleming believed there was not much that could be done to settle the chaos, "once it's out you can't eliminate it".
She predicted that in the next two months, for Sydney, everyone she knows would have had Covid-19.
"We did the right thing and got vaxxed so now it's time to get it, knock it off and then carry on with life."
But Rotorua Multicultural Council president Margriet Theron disagrees.
Her daughter, Marie Bismark, worked as a psychiatrist in the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and was working with many Covid-19 cases.
Theron said it was amazing that Omicron was not yet in our community.
"That must say a lot about how the managed isolation facilities are being managed... they've given us the time to get booster injections before Omicron comes."
But Theron said New Zealand should not copy Australia.
''We should try to keep the numbers down because we do not have large numbers of vacant beds in our hospital and we don't want our medical system to be overrun".
"The economy will be so badly affected... we should still try to suppress the numbers."
The Ministry of Health was approached for comment.
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