National calls for new Covid control inquiry

The Opposition is calling for an inquiry into the Valentines Day cluster of Covid-19.

The cluster caused two separate level 3 lockdowns for Auckland and had 15 cases in total, with four still active. National Party leader Judith Collins said the performance of contact tracing, communications, testing regime, saliva testing, and legality of the Government’s health orders all needed to be looked into. Collins said the decision to leave level 3 the first time resulted in another week-long lockdown that cost the economy half a billion dollars.

The Government’s move out of lockdown was made on the advice of the Ministry of Health and the Government has steadfastly stuck by it, saying the cases that emerged later had broken the rules.

‘‘National thought the call to go out of level 3 in February was bold.

‘‘At the time we did not know the source of the original case, there were two new community cases that day and not all the high school students had been tested,’’ Collins said. ‘‘It has since resulted in a week-long lockdown for Auckland. This yo-yoing in and out of lockdown must be avoided.’’

The Government moved Auckland out of lockdown while there were still 11 test results pending from Papatoetoe High School, where every student and teacher was treated as a contact. One of the students – who the Ministry of Health tried to contact– eventually developed Covid-19. The student appears to have infected others in their family, who worked shifts at Kmart and KFC, which greatly worried contact tracers, and contributed to the shift to another lockdown. Collins said the contact tracing and communication efforts needed to be scrutinised.

‘‘This week we have found out that our contact tracing is not the ‘gold standard’ the Government would have us think. We have not

met critical measures in the latest two outbreaks and all locations of interest have not been disclosed to the public,’’ Collins said.

‘‘This week a young woman was vilified by the prime minister and her Government for following the advice she received. This has highlighted the lack of urgency shown by the Ministry of Health to follow up on unanswered texts or calls.’’ She also said the long lines of cars going into and out of Auckland was a problem.

‘‘How the domestic border is managed needs improvement too.

‘‘There were long queues of people trying to get back to Auckland last weekend and late on Friday afternoon students trying to head home from boarding school were blocked from being reunited with their families at the border with no reasonable explanation.

‘‘We should always be aiming to improve our response, so we should have an inquiry into why Auckland had to go back into level 3 less than two weeks after coming out of a lockdown.

‘‘If anything, this week has shown New Zealand there is a lot we can work on in our response when community cases arise.

‘‘We should always be aiming to improve, so an inquiry into the Valentines Day cluster is appropriate,’’ Collins said.

The Prime Minister’s Office has been contacted for comment.

Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins has indicated some desire to look into the speediness of home visits during contact tracing efforts.

‘‘This yoyoing in and out of lockdown must be avoided.’’ Judith Collins