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Director of health Ashley Bloomfield, who, on most days, reads the numbers that will define how the rest of this year plays out (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director of health Ashley Bloomfield, who, on most days, reads the numbers that will define how the rest of this year plays out (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

SocietyApril 9, 2020

Covid-19: New Zealand cases mapped and charted, April 9

Director of health Ashley Bloomfield, who, on most days, reads the numbers that will define how the rest of this year plays out (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director of health Ashley Bloomfield, who, on most days, reads the numbers that will define how the rest of this year plays out (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

The latest in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall.

This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff Members

These posts collate the most recent statistics and present them as charts and maps. The Ministry of Health typically publishes data updates in the early afternoon, which describe the situation at 9am on the day of release. These data visualisations are interactive – use your mouse or thumb to hover over each graph for more detail.

Note for users of The Spinoff app: if the charts below are not appearing, please update your app to the latest version.

This afternoon’s Ministry of Health figures report that the total number of confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases stands at 1,239 (992 confirmed and 247 probable). A total of 317 people have recovered, an increase of 65 since yesterday.

There were 23 new confirmed cases reported in the last 24 hours and 6 new probable cases. This is the fourth day in a row that the number of new confirmed and probable cases have dropped.

Yesterday, 3,990 tests were processed. This is the highest number of tests processed in a single day. The ministry reported averaging 3,343 Covid-19 lab tests per day during the week ending April 7. A total of 51,165 lab tests have been conducted since March 9. There are 47,056 lab testing supplies in stock – a decrease of 2,137 from 49,193 yesterday.

This chart compares active and recovered cases. Active cases are people who currently have the Covid-19 virus. Recovered cases are people who had the virus, but are at least 10 days since onset and have not exhibited any symptoms for 48 hours.

Today there was a slight decrease in the number of active cases – from 927 active cases yesterday down to 921 this morning. Note how over the last four days the count of active cases is roughly flat. Keep your eye on what happens to this chart over the next few days. Hopefully, the purple active bars will shrink and the blue bars continue to expand.

This chart shows the number of Covid-19 tests conducted each day. Health authorities continue to perform a high number of tests each day. This should provide confidence that the case number counts are reasonably accurate.

The symbol map shows confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases arranged by district health board. Southern (200), Waitematā (171), Waikato (163) and Auckland (159) remain the four district health boards with the largest number of active cases. As one should expect with just 29 new confirmed/probable cases, the numbers have not moved much since yesterday.

The Ministry of Health changed the way that clusters are named today. Some clusters that had broad labels, like “School” and “Event”, have been given more specific descriptors, such as “Marist College” and “World Hereford Conference”. The ministry does not name specific workplaces or private events.

Five clusters grew overnight. The Bluff wedding overtook Marist College as the largest cluster with 87 people compared to 84.

The Auckland workplace cluster shrank from 25 to 24 cases overnight. The ministry added a clarification to their statistics that “a decrease in numbers is due to probable cases being reclassified as not a case”.

The time series chart showing confirmed and probable cases based on the “date of report” continues to trend downwards.

Keep going!