Covid 19 coronavirus: Jacinda Ardern won't ease restrictions if she wants to be cautious

COMMENT:

It's hard to see any scenario where the current alert level restrictions will be lifted from tomorrow.

That's despite the heavy sigh of relief yesterday when Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield revealed that the South Auckland outbreak had only grown to 17 confirmed cases and one probable case.

All of the cases were connected to the cluster. None were outside Auckland, and none had been to an indoor concert, wedding, or similar super-spreader event.

Their travel history included Rotorua, Taupo, and Hamilton but the risk of spread there is lower because, according to Bloomfield, 95 per cent of cases are infected in a workplace or household.

Good signs. But there's only been one day of test results.

The nervous dread leading up to Bloomfield's 1pm update today will be much the same as yesterday. Will there be dozens of cases all over the country?

Cabinet will consider several factors before it decides which parts of the country will have what restrictions.

One is the extent of the outbreak. It's small so far, but there'll be more cases because it's impossible to identify them all without testing everyone at once.

"It grows before it slows," Ardern said yesterday.

A high number of new cases won't necessarily trigger lockdown. Like yesterday, a good outcome would be if all the new cases are linked to the existing cluster, are confined to Auckland, and have had little travel history and empty social calendars.

Another factor is how contained the cluster is. This will depend on how many of the hundreds, thousands even, of close and casual contacts are yet to be reached and isolated.

Then there is the source of infection, which has been elusive so far. Pinning it down isn't essential if mass testing continues, but it would make it easier to thoroughly trace, isolate and contain all chains of transmission.

Not knowing it leaves the possibility of undetected chains of transmission still spreading somewhere.

Attempts to find the source - including genome sequencing, or a positive test of any of the 6000-7000 workers at the border or at managed isolation or quarantine facilities - have yielded little so far.

Cabinet's decision will continue its precautionary approach, and a high number of new clusters spread over the country would likely lead to a return to nationwide lockdown.

If new cases with no link to the current cluster spring up in a different city, those residents may face the same fate - lockdown lite - as Auckland has.

It's a harder judgment call if, say, a single case pops up in a city outside the cluster's travel history.

But it would be a huge call if Ardern, who has made the health response the foundation of the economic response, lifted the current restrictions based on only two days of test results.

Even if the results today reveal few new cases, it would be devastating to ease lockdown lite in Auckland only to be hit later by new clusters.

More data is needed for greater confidence in where the virus is spreading. If today's results are similar to yesterday's, Cabinet could decide to keep the current alert level settings while mass testing continued for another week.

It usually takes about 10 days for people who have been infected to come through in testing results. Covid-infected members of the South Auckland family returned from Rotorua, Hamilton or Taupo on August 11, which would mark August 21 - a week away - for infections in those places to emerge.

National Party leader Judith Collins says neither she nor deputy leader Gerry Brownlee have accused the Government of a cover-up. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Public compliance is another factor for Cabinet to gauge. It is critical for any of the alert levels to work, and is built on a bedrock of trust in Ardern and the Government.

That may have been dented following suggestions of a Government cover-up from the National Party leadership team, vehemently rejected by Ardern.

What exactly was supposed to have been covered up wasn't identified, but the implications were that Ardern knew about signs of community transmission a week before its re-emergence was announced.

It is barely believable to think that Ardern deliberately gave such an infectious and deadly virus a huge head start.

Yesterday National leader Judith Collins denied either she or her deputy Gerry Brownlee were accusing Ardern of sitting on vital information.

But that doesn't square with Brownlee's comments last week in response to Bloomfield calling a second wave "inevitable" - after months of no new cases - and the Government's change of heart on masks.

"It doesn't add up," Brownlee said on August 5. "What do these guys know that they are not telling us?"

He was less explicit on Wednesday when he outlined a series of "interesting" events, including Bloomfield getting tested and Ardern's visit to a mask factory before Tuesday's big reveal of community transmission.

It's legitimate for the Opposition to ask questions and scrutinise the Government, but such comments have the potential - deliberately or not - to undermine confidence and promote public disobedience of alert level rules.

Which is the last thing we need.