NZ queries virus approach as Delta outbreak grows; Iran Covid deaths set new daily record as curbs lifted

Tehran: Iran’s health ministry on Sunday reported more than 680 daily Covid deaths for the first time, as nationwide restrictions to contain the spread of the virus were lifted.

The ministry said the deaths of 684 people in the past 24 hours brought the total number of fatalities to 102,038. Iran also registered 36,419 new infections raising the total since the pandemic started to 4,677,114.

Iranian health officials have acknowledged that the ministry’s figures understate the real toll but even they make Iran the worst-hit Middle Eastern country. Last week Iran tightened curbs to contain the spread of the virus.

The six-day restrictive measures that ended on Saturday included the closure of government buildings, banks and non-essential shops. A nationwide ban on private car travel between provinces remains in force until August 27.

At Tehran’s Tajrish Bazaar there were mixed feelings about the lifting of curbs. "Today I went and got my (Covid) vaccine and came shopping, because I was so mentally exhausted I could no longer stay home," housewife Shamsisadat told AFP.

But salesman Salman complained that although the market was closed for six days, authorities did not impose a ban on public gatherings. "With the market closed, people travelled" from one province to the other and interacted, he said.

Meanwhile, New Zealand conceded its ambitious "Covid zero" elimination strategy may no longer be viable on Sunday as an outbreak of the virulent Delta variant spread further.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins reported a further 21 cases in a virus cluster that emerged in Auckland last week, ending a six-month run of no local cases and sparking a national lockdown.

Hipkins said Delta’s highly transmissible nature was making this outbreak more difficult to contain than others, raising "big questions" about the elimination strategy. "The scale of infectiousness and the speed at which the virus has spread is something that, despite all the best preparations in the world, has put our system under strain," he told TVNZ.

New Zealand’s widely praised Covid-19 response -- which has resulted in just 26 deaths in a population of five million -- centres on eliminating the virus from the community. It has relied on strict border controls backed by hard lockdowns when any cases do slip through, but Hipkins said Delta may force a rethink.

"(Delta’s) like nothing we’ve dealt with before in this pandemic," he said. "It does change everything, it means that all of our existing preparations begin to look less adequate and raises some pretty big questions about the future of our long-term plans."

Neighbouring Australia has also pursued a "Covid zero" strategy and been similarly frustrated as its Delta cases continue to spike. The New Zealand outbreak has underlined the country’s slow vaccination rollout and prompted accusations the government became lax after its early success dealing with the pandemic.

Only about 20 percent of the population is fully inoculated, one of the lowest rates in the developed world. Opposition National Party spokesman Chris Bishop said the outbreak had exposed a lack of urgency in Wellington’s vaccine plans.

"The government’s complacency and inability to ensure supply and delivery of the vaccine has made us all sitting ducks, completely vulnerable to the Delta variant when it inevitably got into the community," he said.

Another opposition figure, ACT Party leader David Seymour, said Hipkins could not use the Delta variant as an excuse for current failures. "We’ve known about Delta since December, what’s he been doing in the meantime?" he asked. Hipkins said elimination remained top priority for the ongoing Delta outbreak, which now totals 72 active cases -- 66 of them in Auckland and six in Wellington.

Positive cases have been recorded visited several busy locations, including schools, churches and supermarkets, with health teams checking the status of almost 9,000 close contacts. The national lockdown is due to expire late Tuesday, although Hipkins indicated Auckland could face further restrictions even if they were lifted elsewhere.

"If I was an Aucklander, I’d certainly be preparing to be at home for a bit longer," he said.In a related development, veteran American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson was hospitalised after testing positive for Covid-19, despite having been vaccinated, representatives said on Saturday.

Jackson, 79, and his wife, Jacqueline Jackson, 77, were in treatment at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, the reverend’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition organisation said in a statement on Facebook.

"Doctors are currently monitoring the condition of both. Anyone who has been around either of them for the last five or six days should follow" the guidelines of the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the brief statement added. Baptist minister Jackson has been a leader in the American Civil Rights movement since the 1960s, when he marched with Martin Luther King and helped fundraise for the cause.

He was the most prominent African American to run for the US presidency, with two unsuccessful attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s, until Barack Obama took the office in 2009.

Jackson was vaccinated against the coronavirus in January this year, putting out a statement at the time urging Black Americans, among whom there is a higher rate of vaccine hesitancy, to get the shot. "For understandable reasons... African Americans harbor suspicions about scientists and vaccines," the statement said, adding, however, that if they "decline to be vaccinated, all will remain at risk."

Covid-19 vaccines are free and widely available in the United States, though only half of the total population is fully vaccinated.

The announcement of Jackson’s hospitalisation comes as the United States is being battered by a new wave of Covid-19 cases driven by the hyper-contagious Delta variant, which has sent national daily cases soaring to beyond 70,000, and concerns vaccine efficacy could be waning.

Jackson announced in 2017 that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The reverend, who served as US president Bill Clinton’s envoy to Africa, was awarded France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour, by French President Emmanuel Macron in July.