Officials ‘making good progress’ investigating outbreak, PM says

WELLINGTON: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed to leave ‘‘no stone unturned’’ in the hunt for the source of the Valentine’s Day Covid19 outbreak.

Ms Ardern said yesterday officials were ‘‘making good progress’’ in the investigation of the three new community cases.

The Auckland family at the centre of the latest outbreak were not regular users of the Covid Tracer app.

However, authorities had been able to pull together a list of locations visited by the trio over the past week which included not only around South Auckland but various stopoffs as two members of the family visited New Plymouth over Waitangi Weekend.

The woman works in the laundry at LSG Sky Chefs in Mangere; her husband is a tradesman.

Their daughter is in Year 9 at Papatoetoe High School, which would reopen today.

Officials were keeping an open mind as to which of the three caught the virus first.

The United Kingdom variant the family has was ‘‘highly transmissible and a fastmoving chain’’ which required fast action.

It had not been linked to a known case in MIQ.

Ms Ardern said officials were going back through the health order mandating testing, as to whether it needed to include people in the woman’s situation, secondary contact with the virus.

LSG Sky Chefs, which services at least 34 airlines worldwide, according to its website, including Air New Zealand, has shut its laundry department in Mangere.

Air New Zealand said yesterday the company was not uplifting any food or catering items from LSG Auckland while the cases were investigated.

■ Five new cases, including one historical case, were found in managed isolation facilities in the past day, the Ministry of Health said yesterday.