Infections still under investigation Row leaves NZ industry with a chip on its shoulder

Hipkins ‘confident but paranoid’

CHRISTCHURCH: Two healthcare workers may have caught Covid19 as infected foreign mariners were transferred from the isolation wing to the quarantine wing of the Sudima Hotel at Christchurch Airport.

They could have also caught the virus from particles in the air while they were treating fishermen with Covid19, a risk that would have been minimised had they been wearing N95 masks.

Those are among the lines of investigation into how they became infected, incoming Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said yesterday.

‘‘Some people when they tested positive were transferred to the quarantine wing and that’s something we’re looking very closely at.

‘‘Another question is: should they have N95 masks?’’

The workers were wearing PPE including medical masks, which protect against infection from droplets that are expelled when a patient coughs, sneezes, talks or sings.

N95 masks protect against aerosol transmission, or ‘‘very small particles that can suspend in the air and can be inhaled into the lungs’’, according to the Health Ministry.

Hipkins said there was no reason to reserve N95 masks for other airborne diseases because there was a big supply.

A possible change could be for different PPE use in different environments. N95 masks, for example, might be more suitable in poorly ventilated areas.

He has asked incoming Associate Health Minister and infectious diseases expert Ayesha Verrall to look at the issue.

The two Sudima workers are the only current community cases in New Zealand, and so far none of their close contacts have returned a positive result.

There were two new cases to report yesterday, both contained in managed isolation.

Border control measures were as strong as ever, Mr Hipkins said, despite the six or seven instances in just over three months where Covid19 has leaked from a border facility into the community.

‘‘They’ve all been well contained very quickly and the system’s worked as it should.

‘‘We’re not repeating the same mistakes again. Whenever something happens, if there’s a weakness, the weakness is solved.’’

He said he was ‘‘confident but paranoid’’.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a business speech yesterday that New Zealand’s managed isolation or quarantine (MIQ) facilities capacity is larger than Australia’s on a per capita basis.

‘‘Few other countries are even attempting to stop Covid at the border in this way and in the main it is working. But there is also no foolproof, errorfree way of managing a virus.’’

She appeared to pour cold water on opening up MIQ to private providers, a proposal floated by National and Act New Zealand .

‘‘There are some basic provisions that we have to have in order to make quarantine work . . . Health staff and law enforcement are amongst them. Every health worker we remove from the system, places pressure elsewhere.’’

Another way to free up MIQ space would be to allow overseas returnees from lower risk countries to isolate at home.

But Mr Hipkins said that was a risk because people were already testing negative on day 3 in MIQ and then testing positive on day 12.

‘‘It’s quite high risk because you increase the number of people they are exposed to.’’

Taiwan allows isolation at home, but it tracks those people in what Mr Hipkins says is ‘‘quite an invasive way’’.

‘‘They are basically monitoring their people. I’m not enthusiastic about that.

‘‘New Zealanders are very protective of their data, and we’ve done some public attitudinal research on that and found that New Zealanders would be very reluctant for the Government to record their movements.’’

A way around that which the Government is looking at is for GPS data to be collected on the Covid Tracer app.

‘‘On the Tracer app, it’s still your data. Owning your own data is imperative,’’ Mr Hipkins said.

The AppleGoogle GPS model incorporated with the app could be trialled with borderfacing workers, he said.

MIQ workers are also going to trial the Covid Card, which uses Bluetooth to record other cards in close proximity.

And a Covid Card trial in Rotorua is also about to begin.

It had been delayed, Mr Hipkins said, because of a software problem which meant the cards had to be sourced from a different supplier.

Public health experts have previously asked about moving MIQ facilities away from Auckland, where the population is more concentrated, and even using the army facility at Ohakea, which NZ First supported.

But the Government has said Ohakea did not have suitable facilities, such as separate bathrooms.

Purposebuilt facilities were not out of the question, but Hipkins said building them only made sense if there was no vaccine for another couple of years. — The New Zealand Herald

WELLINGTON: A dispute over the humble potato has reached boiling point over claims European frozen fries are being dumped in New Zealand.

Potatoes New Zealand is worried for the local industry because surplus fries are being imported from the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is now investigating — but it could take up to six months.

Global demand for frozen fries has plummeted because of Covid19 lockdowns, leaving a mountain of product sitting in European cool stores.

Potatoes New Zealand said trade data showed exports of frozen potato products from the EU to New Zealand jumped by 50% in June — putting the $1 billionayear potato industry here under threat.

Chief executive Chris Claridge was relieved MBIE was looking into it.

‘‘This now formalises the Government’s involvement and ensures that the evidence we’ve put in front of the Government is dealt with accordingly,’’ he said.

At the time of the group’s application to the ministry, the surplus in Europe was 1.5 million tonnes.

It is now estimated to be 2.6 million tonnes and growing because of further lockdowns in parts of Europe.

Canterbury potato grower Stuart Wright said the local industry was small and growers needed a level playing field.

‘‘We’re not scared of competition from other players around the world — it just needs to be fair competition.’’

He urged potato traders to act sensibly.

‘‘We’re certainly not pointing the finger at individual potato growers in Europe.

‘‘I think it’s more the people that trade in those fries that maybe are taking the opportunities that they see as possible when they shouldn’t be,’’ he said.

In a statement, MBIE said there was sufficient information to investigate claims made by Potatoes New Zealand.

It said Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Kris Faafoi would be consulted about whether to impose temporary antidumping duties while it looked into the matter. — RNZ