Potent Covid-19 variant surfaces in Queenstown

The BA.2.75 Covid-19 variant has likely surfaced in Queenstown. Photo / 123rf

A new and potentially more virulent sub-variant of Covid-19 has probably surfaced in Queenstown.

Wastewater testing has recorded a substantially positive result for what scientists suspect might be the BA.2.75 strain of the pandemic disease, a new strain of the virus which was first detected in Asia in July.

The Institute of Environmental Science and Research’s testing system cannot as yet distinguish between BA1 Covid and BA.2.75, but genomic swabs from patients suggest that it is most likely BA.2.75 which they have contracted.

The new variant, which is suspected to be comprise about 10 per cent of Covid cases detected in wastewater nationally, is still new and little understood by scientists.

The Ministry of Health advised that the new variant had some characteristics which enhanced its ability to evade immunity and that it may be more transmissible than some of the other recently-emerged Covid strains.

“There is no current evidence that it leads to more severe disease, although assessing the evidence is at a very early stage.”

Because, unlike the Delta variant, BA.2.75 did not appear to be a more severe strain of Covid-19.

Public health settings and messages now in place did not need to be upgraded, the ministry said.

The level of Covid-19 detected in Queenstown’s wastewater has decreased in the most recent tests, but it still runs well ahead of the officially reported case numbers.

The most recent official active case figures in Queenstown showed a sharp rise, from 46 on October 9 to 72 on October 16.

Those ministry-supplied figures also showed a jump in officially reported cases in Dunedin, as active cases were up from 223 on October 9 to 307 on October 16.

The ESR results have mirrored that trend, as all three Dunedin testing locations reported higher levels of Covid-19 in the water in the past week.

Nationally, compared to a month ago, 56 per cent of sites showed increased levels of Covid and 22 per cent showed a decrease.

However, the report said Covid levels, while gradually rising, remained below the levels seen during the two Omicron waves this year.

Meanwhile, newly-released data suggests the magnitude of the impact that the rampant Omicron outbreaks earlier this year had on southern emergency departments.

Southern had one of the highest case rates in the country, and hospitals in both Southland and Dunedin had to close wards several times due to Covid and influenza exposure events in each hospital.

Statistics released to the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists under the Official Information Act showed that the number of people who presented to the emergency department in the first six months of this year dropped markedly, reflecting that advice to the community to keep the emergency department solely for urgent cases may have been heeded.

However, those people who did go to the hospital had to wait longer to be treated: about two-thirds of those who came to ED and required further care had to wait more than six hours to be admitted to the hospital — one of the worst wait times in the country.

The then-Southern District Health Board had warned the public several times during the Omicron waves that it faced severe staff shortages due to seasonal illness, Covid cases or protocols, and that serious delays were occurring.

In the last three months of 2020-21, 53 per cent of qualifying cases were being admitted within six hours, a rate which dropped to 44 per cent in the following six months, and then to just 37 per cent at the end of 2021-22.

Even pre-Covid, few DHBs ever achieved the national target of 95 per cent of patients to be admitted within six hours; in that time, southern emergency departments usually managed to admit between 55-75 per cent of patients, a rate in line with that achieved by several other health regions.

mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz