5. Question No. 5—HealthHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of HealthQuestion No. 5—Health5. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: How is the Government adapting its public health response to manage the evolving nature of the coronavirus outbreak and what support if any can the Opposition provide to help New Zealanders?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): New Zealand has acted swiftly to prepare for and address cases of COVID-19 in advance of most other countries. Yesterday the newly formed Cabinet committee met to ensure we can continue to be nimble and responsive. Public health staff working actively to contain the virus are working hard to limit its spread. Many of them are working long hours and I commend their commitment to keeping New Zealand safe. I do see a constructive role for the Opposition to play to ensure New Zealanders receive messages that are based on the best scientific and medical advice that is coming out of the Ministry of Health.Hon Member: But not David Bennett.SPEAKER: Order!Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does the revelation of New Zealand's first human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus in New Zealand change his assessment that the risk of a sustained community outbreak remains low; if not why not?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The advice I have had is that it remains low. The emerging evidence is that transmission within families is the most common route and indeed in this case the person believed to have been the vector is in self-isolation and is being treated as though they are a case even though they are now currently asymptomatic.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is it correct that the passenger who arrived from Iran had only mild symptoms of the virus and does this change his assessment of the transmissibility of the virus by asymptomatic or low-symptom carriers?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I think it's important that we are careful here to distinguish between low-symptomatic and asymptomatic. The evidence seems to be that transmission by asymptomatic people is not happening—in contrast to the flu where we know this does happen—but low symptomatic is of course a different thing.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Has he received advice on whether the low-symptomatic carrier would have met the threshold for a coronavirus test that is currently being carried out in New Zealand laboratories?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I have sought urgent advice to clarify precisely that situation. I believe that the advice is coming through now much faster—the technical advisory group is now meeting on a daily basis and they are assessing the emerging evidence. It is important for the public to know that 80 percent of people in the rather large study that's been done in China already recovered without any hospital assistance and so for the vast majority of people who have contracted this virus the consequences have not been great. None the less we continue to be glad to see the consequences of our early action because it has bought us more time in New Zealand through acting early and decisively to run the scenarios to get the evidence of what's happening overseas to make sure that we are responding in the best way possible on the latest scientific and medical advice.Hon Michael Woodhouse: What flexibility do medical practitioners have in deciding whether or not a COVID-19 test is appropriate for a patient who presents themselves with low symptoms?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Clinicians are the best placed people to make the judgment not politicians. So we are expecting that clinicians will use their best clinical judgment based on the latest scientific and medical advice.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he saying that Wellington Hospital senior doctors are wrong when they say that they were prevented from applying that discretion in getting COVID-19 tests on patients they thought warranted it?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I fear that the member might not be completely accurately presenting that story. However what I would say is that there is no restriction on the number of tests to be carried out—clinicians are using their best clinical judgment. So far we've had around 200 tests run over the first month of having the testing up and running in New Zealand and we've had a very low number of confirmed cases thus far. The ability to conduct far more tests is there should we need it.