Contact tracing is key to stopping the measles outbreak. Photo / Getty Images
Health Minister Simeon Brown said the health system has enough resource to step-up contract tracing efforts if that is what the current measles outbreak requires.
Brown made the remarks as he revealed he had seen modelling showing “there could be a lot more cases than currently we are receiving”.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall said contact tracing was key to getting on top of the outbreak.
“The problem is if actions today that don’t prioritise proper contact tracing lead to a 40-50 week outbreak that closes schools around the country – that’s the choice you face during an outbreak,” she said, when asked about the choice between keeping schools open and closing them.
Dr Emma Sherwood, public health medicine specialist for the National Public Health Service, told the Herald that as of September 2025, “we have approximately 189 staff across all regions who can be deployed for contact tracing, and this can increase to approximately 235 staff drawing on further resourcing if needed”.
Information provided under the Official Information Act revealed 3280 fulltime equivalents (FTE) worked on contact tracing during the Omicron phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022 – a much larger outbreak.
Brown said the Government is in the midst of a “stamp it out” approach to the outbreak, using contact tracing, the process of finding people who have come into contact with a case and working out if they are at risk of catching the disease and passing it on.
“The National Public Health Service is working very hard to contact-trace those cases and making sure we can stamp out this measles outbreak,” Brown told media this morning.
“They [contact tracers] are obviously working very hard but the reality is we are looking at making sure there is resource to step that up if needed to make sure we can keep on top of this and stamp this out,” Brown said.
Brown would not be drawn on what the modelling received by his office actually said, noting that the number of cases would depend on whether the case was brought under control.
“If you look at the 2019 outbreak, that had about 2000 cases. That’s one scenario. We are focused at the moment on stamping this out,” Brown said.
Health NZ Te Whatu Ora said there were no new cases to announce today. That meant the number of known measles cases nationally remains at 17, of whom 12 are no longer infectious.
“Health NZ continues to lead the response to the current measles outbreak with a focus on ‘stamping out’ cases. We will continue to publish updates when new information becomes available,” the agency said.
Brown said the focus this week was on vaccination and he urged people to check their immunisation status. For New Zealanders who do not know whether they have been vaccinated against measles, there is no harm in getting vaccinated again.
Brown said the vaccination was free for everyone over the age of 1. Brown said there were over 100,000 doses of vaccine in stock and more were on the way.
He said the Government’s technical advisory group was currently looking at whether to extend vaccinations to children under the age of 1. Currently, people travelling to countries with measles outbreaks can vaccinate children less than a year old.
Verrall said contact tracing is “the most important intervention right now”.
“It is always important to get vaccinated, I totally endorse the Government’s actions that they’re taking around vaccination but the one thing that will be the difference between this outbreak growing or being stamped out is contact tracing,” Verrall said.
She said there were probably “hundreds if not thousands” of contacts.
A measles plan prepared by former Health Minister Shane Reti in March 2024 noted the contact tracing system in 2023 held up well during “seven discrete responses to measles, with four of them occurring at the same time as other significant public health emergencies”.
However, that plan noted there was no long-term agreement for “out-of-hours” support for contact tracing once a contract expired on June 30, 2024. These people would support the main, publicly-employed contact tracers.
Brown told the Herald this contract had been “a time-limited surge capacity contract”.
However, Brown said this contract was no longer needed.
“By that time [June 2024], the National Public Health Service, established as part of the 2022 health reforms, was fully operational and its operating model was in place. National teams were providing on-call and weekend support for contact tracing to assist regional public health services,” he said.
Verrall, however, warned that cuts to public health units under the Government’s health restructure would have had an impact on contact-tracing capacity.
Verrall has experience in regard to contact tracing. One of her last jobs before becoming an MP was a rapid report on the Government’s contact-tracing capacity during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“We’re in the phase of the outbreak where efforts to stamp it out are what makes a difference between the outbreak being stopped or growing from here,” she said.
The last significant measles out outbreak occurred in 2019, The worst outbreak in two decades, it ran for 40 weeks before being stamped out.
“There were more than 100 cases on any day and a third of those people went to hospital, it cost New Zealanders $20 million,” Verrall said.
Sherwood said that in December 2024, a contact-tracing surge plan was developed in response to the known risk of a large measles outbreak.
“This plan sets out three stages: the first is a region managing local cases and contacts, stage two involves delegation of work across all public health services and stage three involves a wider workforce from within the NPHS working in contact tracing,” Sherwood said.
“We are currently in stage two with all regions working to manage case and contact management workload,” Sherwood said.