The Wire with Joel

Lillian spoke to Fletcher this morning about contact tracing, an injection of cash into the regions and the announcement from the SFO that their decision regarding NZ First’s political donations will be out before the election. She started by asking how he felt about moving to level 3 next week.

Fletcher stated the government would have had the necessary capacity for contact tracing as of the 23rd April - the originally stated day to come out of Level 4 before the government announced an extentions. I wrote to the Ministry of Health asking whether this was indeed the case and this was their response:

"The Ministry is confident that New Zealand can provide high quality contact tracing. The Public Health Units (PHUs) and National Close Contact Service (NCCS) have a baseline capacity in place as well as additional capacity they can call on to deal with the contact tracing needs that might be ahead of us.  This includes managing under a range of scenarios that could occur within the different alert levels and controls and includes a current ability to scale up to 10,000 calls a day. From our most recent information from public health units and the National Close Contact Service, for the period 13-17 April, 80% of close contacts were traced within 48 hours of the case being notified to the units."

Government has announced some guidelines of Alert Level 2 with more expected to come. Laura Kvigstad gives you a quick rundown of the guidelines so far and the response that some industries have had to them. 

New research from the Child Poverty Action Group has shown families with children receiving benefits would require an estimated $110 a week on average to reach 50 per cent of equivalised median after-housing-costs (AHC) income. These are the measures used by the government to measure the amount of children living in poverty, as in, after you pay for rent how much money is left over. Those families would also require an extra $215 to reach 60 per cent of the same measure, meaning income support levels for the 2020/21 year are well below the Government’s official poverty measures, even when recent benefit increases are included. Lillian spoke to Janet McAllister who was part of the research team to find out more:

The Dunedin Study is a longitudinal study that began in Dunedin in the 1970s. The study involves over 1000 study members who have been regularly assessed since their birth. The most recent data was collected at phase (age) 45. Currently Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) is holding an exhibit on the study called A Slice of Life: The World Famous Dunedin Study. The exhibit celebrates the study findings and the work of all of the particpants. Jemima Huston speaks with the study's Cohort and Assessment Manager Sean Hogan about the global impact of the study. She also talks to MOTAT's Exhibitions Manager Rebecca Britt about Slice of Life and what visitors can expect from the exhibition. 

Slice of Life: The World Famous Dunedin Study is on display at MOTAT 1 July - 4 October 2020. See https://www.motat.nz/exhibitions/slice-of-life-the-world-famous-dunedin-study/ for more details.