24 Jan 2022

Prof Michael Baker on health impact of Omicron in community

From First Up, 5:47 am on 24 January 2022

New Zealand is waking up to tighter Covid-19 restrictions this morning after confirmation that a family in the Nelson-Tasman region have the Omicron variant. Ten people have now tested positive in the family's household, as has a flight attended who was working on a flight that they were on between Auckland and Nelson. The family attended several large gatherings including a wedding and a funeral and visited an amusement park and Auckland's Sky Tower. The new rules aren't as strict as the lockdowns of the past, but they do limit the number of people allowed at gatherings and require widespread use of the vaccine pass. So will this be enough to deal with this highly transmissible strain of Covid? Joining Nathan Rarere is University of Otago epidemiologist professor Michael Baker.