It comes as Auckland Transport battles a fresh surge of infections among bus drivers on key routes connecting downtown Auckland to the North Shore.
Commuters using the normally busy public transport link were advised this week they could expect services to be disrupted.
“Due to a Covid surge NX1 and NX2 buses are experiencing increased cancellations,” the notification read.
Auckland Transport has been approached for comment.
Further south as many as 25 Metlink frontline staff were off sick with Covid in Wellington with a number of trains in the capital deemed not safe to operate.
Metlink acting Group Manager Fiona Abbott said 11 rush hour services on the Hutt Valley line were replaced with buses yesterday.
“We understand our customers’ frustration at having their morning commute disrupted by the outbreak. Regrettably, it is very difficult to source additional bus replacements during peak times due to the limited number of available buses and drivers.
She said Metlink was keenly aware the outbreak would have an impact on the afternoon’s rail services and possibly for the rest of week. We are working with Transdev to minimise disruption to passengers.”
Last week the Ministry of Health said there were 12,028 reported cases of Covid-19 across New Zealand. Of these 3429 - more than a quarter - were recorded across the Auckland region.
Modelling Aotearoa’s Professor Michael Plank said this latest Auckland result didn’t necessarily indicate the start of a winter wave as experienced in 2022, describing the wastewater data as “noisy.
“I think it’s really a bit early to say if the increase in Auckland’s wastewater - it can just vary week to week a little bit randomly,” he said.
“If that trend continues and we continue to see increases consistently in the next few weeks certainly that would start to indicate potentially that this is the start of a winter wave - but I don’t think we can say that at this point in time.”
While the wastewater might have doubled it had done so from a very low level and readings were still at a fraction of those recorded around Christmas during the country’s most recent wave in December, he said.
Plank said since February the wastewater data had bounced up and down within a range and this latest data point was not really that different from anything seen over that period.
“We’ll continue to see waves from time to time, potentially with new variants and over the winter months when we typically see an increase in respiratory diseases, but the fact that it has been pretty flat for the best part of six months now I think is giving us an indication that this is potentially a long-term baseline.”
Meanwhile this week the country marked a grim milestone in our pandemic history passing the 3000th Covid-19 death with a leading epidemiologist warning the virus was on track to claim twice as many lives as flu this year.
“Based on the number of deaths seen so far in 2023, we can expect at least 1000 deaths this year if that rate continues,” Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker earlier told the Herald.
“This is twice the number estimated to be caused by influenza, and three times the road toll.”
Baker said the true number of deaths caused by the virus was likely higher than what was being formally attributed to it, as it was known to cause an increase in mortality rates for at least 12 months after infection.
He said the virus clearly remained a leading cause of death in New Zealand: the 2448 virus-related deaths reported in 2022 accounted for about 6.3 per cent of total deaths that year.
