Case A’s source may never be known — Hipkins
WELLINGTON: Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says the source of the latest community case that plunged Auckland into lockdown may never be found.
But he promised to leave ‘‘no stone unturned’’ in the search for the source of case A — the woman who works at LSG Sky Chefs in Mangere.
Speaking yesterday, directorgeneral of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there was a new lead in how Covid19 again found its way into the community.
Officials have found a ‘‘possible’’ similarity between case A’s sequence and that of someone who stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton MIQ facility in Auckland.
But even this theory is considered ‘‘very unlikely’’ by Dr Bloomfield, who said the most likely scenario is the case was contracted at the border.
‘‘The airport precinct seems the most likely route of infection — we just need to get to the bottom of how [the LGS worker] has been exposed.’’
Because of this, he confirmed yesterday that officials were now investigating if staff mingling at a cantina at Sky Chef could be linked to the initial outbreak.
That means, according to Dr Bloomfield, there are now 444 other people working around the area of Sky Chef of interest to the Ministry of Health.
That is people working at the site, as well as contractors who bring laundry and food to and from the airport.
So far, there are 350 negative tests with 93 still to come.
No new community cases of Covid19 were announced yesterday.
‘‘[This] does provide continued reassurance that the swift response to the system continues to be highly effective in response to the Auckland February cases,’’ Dr Bloomfield said.
And Mr Hipkins is striking an optimistic tone about the likelihood of any future lockdowns resulting from this current community outbreak.
‘‘We have demonstrated that we can contain Covid19 without the need to escalate alert levels.’’
He said alert levels would only be escalated if there were extra risk factors which officials were not able to quantify or control.
Now all 31 close contacts from Papatoetoe High School have returned a negative result — aside from the one case revealed on Wednesday.
Some 1490 are considered casual contacts at the school — but so far, 1398 have returned negative results with 91 still to come.
But Mr Hipkins has admitted there was ‘‘absolutely’’ a possibility the Government might never find the source of this latest outbreak.
He pointed out that the source of the August community outbreak was never found.
‘‘We might not be able to get to a point where we say, ‘actually, this is what we think is the most likely [reason for the outbreak’].’’
Auckland University professor of medicine Des Gorman has criticised what he says was the Government’s lack of clarity around shifting the alert levels.
‘‘Certainly, if you take Sunday, for example, if we need to be in Level 3 — and you and I would say that was a reasonable response to the unknown at the time — then how on Earth did they let the Big Gay Out and the America’s Cup go ahead?’’
But Mr Hipkins defended the Government’s moves.
‘‘People can have confidence in the decision that we’ve taken, because of the extensive level of testing that we have seen and the fact that we have been able to identify the close contacts.’’
Although Mr Hipkins acknowledged Sunday’s lockdown did come into force quicker than previous alert level movements, ‘‘that was by design’’.
‘‘Where we do want to use a short, sharp shock we do want to do that as quickly and efficiently as possible.’’
This comes as officials prepare for tomorrow’s vaccines rollout to frontline Covid19 workers.
Mr Hipkins said health workers have been doing ‘‘dry runs’’ to stress test the system to identify any gaps.
‘‘There will be challenges and logistics — but the systems that we have set up . . . are robust and flexible.’’
The test runs included a number of scenarios, such as how the vaccines will be dropped and what should happen if a vial, or vials, is dropped.
‘‘Human beings are not 100% perfect — people make mistakes,’’ he said.
Mr Hipkins confirmed the Government has a ‘‘contingency’’ built in which accounts for some vaccines being dropped, as well as others being wasted in other ways.
That contingency was roughly 15% when the order for the vaccines was first made but Dr Bloomfield said, given the ‘‘dry runs’’, he is not expecting wastage to reach that level. — The New Zealand Herald