Coronavirus flight lands in Auckland
The Air NZ flight evacuating close to 200 New Zealanders, Australians and Pacific Island nationals from the epicentre of the coronavirus in China, landed in Auckland last night.
THE FLIGHT
Flight NZ1942 carried 198 passengers, including five pilots, 11 cabin crew, and medical engineering staff. It departed Wuhan, China, at 6.45am yesterday, and landed at Auckland International Airport at 6.12pm.
There were 54 New Zealand citizens on board, and 44 New Zealand permanent residents with Chinese passports.
Also on board were 35 Australian passengers – 23 citizens and 12 residents with Chinese passports. A number of foreign nationals were also on the flight, predominantly from the Pacific.
Passengers included those from Papua New Guinea (17 passengers), Timor Leste (17), Samoa (5), Tonga (4), Fiji (2), Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, Uzbekistan and the Netherlands (one from each).
Eight British nationals were also on board. All evacuees were to be quarantined for 14 days at a military facility on the Whangapara¯oa Peninsula, north Auckland, with the exception of the Australian passengers who were to be transferred directly to a flight to Australia.
Eight buses with blacked out windows to take the evacuees to Whangapara¯ oa arrived at the airport just before the plane landed. The drivers could be seen wearing face masks.
Five Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and Ministry of Health (MOH) staff were already on board when the plane arrived in Wuhan, and another three MFAT consular staff boarded in Wuhan.
All MFAT and MOH staff on the flight will also go into isolation at Whangapara¯ oa.
About 60 people who registered interest in the flight did not arrive at the airport in Wuhan.
One person was stopped from boarding by Chinese authorities at the health pre-screening check.
Air NZ’s head pilot, Captain Dave Morgan, told Radio NZ the airline would take full responsibility if one of its crew contracted the novel coronavirus on the charter flight. Morgan said there was a low risk of the crew contracting the virus because of preflight screening.
The plane was to receive a special cleaning service that Air NZ uses in similar medical event situations. The flight crew will be given time off but will not be quarantined.
QUARANTINE ORDERS
The Government is looking at ways to ‘‘check on’’ Kiwis returning from China amid claims some are ignoring the order to quarantine themselves.
Since Monday, New Zealand citizens and permanent residents returning from mainland China have been required to ‘‘selfisolate’’ at home for 14 days to ensure they are not infected with the novel coronavirus.
However, health officials have not been checking whether people are following this directive, stating the focus has been on providing information to inbound passengers and trusting them to do the right thing.
There are now more than 20,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, most of them in mainland China, and 427 deaths. There have been no confirmed cases in New Zealand.
One Auckland woman told
she had relatives recently returned from mainland China who said they would ignore the ban and return to work.
When she followed up with local authorities, no-one was able to advise what should be done to enforce the quarantine, she said.
Ministry of Health directorgeneral Dr Ashley Bloomfield previously said he was confident that, given enough information, people would adhere to the quarantine voluntarily.
However, on Tuesday afternoon, Bloomfield said the ministry was now looking at options to ‘‘check on’’ people who had returned from mainland China recently.