In an article on The Conversation UC Professor Michael Plank and Professor Shaun Hendy from the University of Auckland assess the risks that come with moving Auckland to Alert Level 3 and describe the potential worst case scenario, comparing it to the outbreaks in Australia.
Photo by Dan Freeman
The decision to move Auckland to alert level 3 from midnight on Tuesday is a calculated risk by the government. New daily cases in Auckland have stayed stubbornly high over the past week, a period when many of us had hoped to see them fall to single digits.
On a positive note, most of these new cases have been identified by contact tracing and many have been isolated before they tested positive, meaning they have had fewer chances to infect others.
On the other hand, a worrying few continue to test positive before being identified by contract tracers. Ideally we would like to see no more of these cases because they are much more likely to have been infectious in the community. We can't be confident that the Delta outbreak is contained until these become few and far between.
