5000-plus contacts identified

Health officials have identified more than 5000 people at risk of exposure to Covid-19 as part of the February Auckland cluster, and have tested all but 263 of them at least once.

The full list of cluster contacts, provided to Stuff by the Ministry of Health, shows among the people being traced are more than 1500 from Papatoetoe High School, more than 1800 customers of Kmart Botany, nearly 90 KFC Botany Downs customers, and 158 Cityfitness gym-goers.

The numbers show officials on Tuesday had identified 86 ‘‘close-plus’’ contacts, 2029 close contacts, and 3702 casual-plus contacts.

Of the 5817 contacts, there remained 43 people who had not been reached by contact tracers; four of these were close-plus contacts.

On Wednesday, DirectorGeneral of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said contact tracers were hitting the expected metric of reaching 80 per cent of close contacts within 48 hours. He said it was not possible to put a target on the speed of reaching casual or casual-plus contacts.

The ministry has faced questions about Case I, one of 11 students not reached by health officials by the time the first lockdown of Auckland was lifted. Family members of this case went to work at Kmart and KFC while infectious.

There were multiple attempts to contact this family, Bloomfield confirmed last week, but no attempt to visit them at home.

On Wednesday, Bloomfield said he could not guarantee that contact tracers would knock on doors in the future.