Otago Daily Times

Search for 39 people

- JASON WALLS

WELLINGTON: New Zealand is not in the clear when it comes to the current Covid19 community scare, despite assurances Aucklander­s can travel over their long anniversar­y weekend.

Directorge­neral of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield yesterday deployed a health team to track down a cohort of 39 people, who had stayed at the Pullman Hotel alongside Covid19 positive people, to confirm if they had been retested.

To add to the Government’s woes, its ‘‘premium’’ level isolation standards were again under pressure after it was revealed an MIQ worker had been sacked after a 20minute ‘‘encounter’’ with someone staying at an isolation hotel.

There was some good news yesterday when Aucklander­s were told they could travel over the long weekend.

‘‘Our advice . . . is that there’s no reason why people’s travel plans should change,’’ Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said.

Dr Bloomfield warned everyone to remain vigilant: ‘‘Alert Level 1 is not alert level none’’.

However, there are still major question marks around 39 people now being tracked down by health officials.

There were 353 people who were at the Pullman Hotel while Covid19 infected people were in the facility earlier this month.

Those people have since been released from the MIQ.

Some 312 had returned a negative result and two — the two reported earlier this week in Auckland’s North Shore — were positive and were now in isolation.

There are still 39 people Dr Bloomfield was unsure about.

‘‘Most of [those 39] who have been recontacte­d have said, ‘I have had a test, or I am about to have a test.’

He could not say for sure how many were left outstandin­g and how many were even in Auckland.

‘‘Some people have not picked up the followup phone calls . . . and so we’re doing additional things to track them down,’’

He was confident the public health units he had dispatched would track the stragglers.

There were no new community cases of Covid19 yesterday, but authoritie­s reported two new cases of people who they believe caught the virus in the Pullman Hotel, rather than overseas.

They were staying on the same floor and have the South African variant strain of the virus. — The New Zealand Herald

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