6 April 2023
Al
[FYI request #22159 email]
Tēnā koe Al
Your request for Official information, reference: HNZ00014309
Thank you for your email on 20 March 2023, asking for the following which has been
considered under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act). You have specifically requested:
“Could i please know how many of the following contact types that were in use during Covid
resulted in positive cases?
These are the contact classifications i've found:
•
Close contact
•
Household contact
•
Close plus
•
Casual contact
•
Casual plus contact
•
Secondary contact
Against each contact classification i'd like to know for both 2020 and 2021 and 2022 if it
exists:
- By year how many were identified in total (a raw number)
- By year how many of these contacts identified actually became a case.”
To create a link between a case and an earlier contact record for a person we rely on, both the
contact record and the case record needing to have a National Health Index (NHI) number entered.
However, contact records frequently did not have this information recorded as it depends on what
phase the response was at. For example, contact tracing of close contacts was always prioritised
over casual contacts, which may have led to less casual contacts having their NHI details entered
at the time they were identified. If this casual contact later became a case, we may not be able to
link them back to their earlier casual contact record.
The introduction of the online case self-service tool in February 2022 has led to less contact
records having NHI numbers due to a reliance on user input of information, which is not always
sufficiently complete to al ow an NHI match to occur.
It is important to note that while a contact may have had a subsequent case record created within
20 days of that exposure, there is no way to determine that it was that exposure that resulted in
their COVID-19 infection.
The table below gives the count of contacts as created in the National Contact Tracing Solution
(NCTS) per year by contact type. It also provides a count of those contacts who had a COVID-19
case record created in NCTS within 20 days of their exposure as a contact. Data is for the period
17 August 2020 to 15 March 2023. This is for community cases and contacts only and excludes
cases and contacts which entered through border events.
Casual
Close
Close Plus
Casual
Household
contact
contact
contact
Plus
contact
contact
Contacts created
2,988
0
2,543
0
0
2020
Contacts with a
case record within
226
0
10
0
0
20 days
Contacts created
61,742
1,191
7,487
7,006
13,596
2021
Contacts with a
case record within
1,312
179
15
34
5,207
20 days
Contacts created
49,311
161
2,540
320
2,096,891
2022
Contacts with a
case record within
3,783
19
14
<5
343,238
20 days
Contacts created
0
0
0
0
107,143
2023
Contacts with a
case record within
0
0
0
0
10,285
20 days
How to get in touch
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[Health New Zealand request email].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Te Whatu Ora may
proactively release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name
and contact details, wil be removed prior to release.
Nāku iti noa, nā
Matt Hannant
Interim Director Outbreak Response
National Public Health Service
T eWhatuOra.govt.nz