‘Livid’ Ombudsman looks into quarantine

The Chief Ombudsman is set to inspect the Covid-19 isolation and quarantine facilities set up for people arriving from overseas.

It follows an experience by his staff, who were staying in an Auckland hotel and came into close contact with people in quarantine – and did not immediately know.

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said he was ‘‘livid’’.

A lot of people who came in from overseas and were placed in quarantine in the hotel were mingling, Boshier said.

‘‘To me, that is a facility that was not well-organised.’’

His staff took preventive selfisolation steps as they figured out the consequences, and a prison inspection had to be cancelled.

Boshier said some Ministry of Health decision-making had not been ‘‘up to scratch’’ and in a couple of cases standards had not been met.

His investigation would include looking at the compassionate leave measures and the exemptions regime. It follows his other probes into prisons, rest homes and mental health facilities during the Covid crisis.

Boshier understood that as of Tuesday there were about 3500 people in managed isolation or quarantine.

Thousands more have completed their mandatory 14 days in isolation since border control measures were introduced on April 9.

‘‘As these are places of detention which fall within my designation, I am setting up a new inspection programme to independently monitor and report on them,’’ he said.

‘‘The public needs to be assured that people who are being isolated for health reasons are being treated fairly and their basic human rights are being respected.’’

He would start the inspections next month, and they would be conducted under the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.