A damaging deluge of debacles over Covid

Govt moves at warp speed to fix damage but clearly some public confidence has been lost

The one thing we have learned from the past week’s deluge of debacles over management of Covid-19 quarantine and isolation facilities is just how fragile confidence has been.

That applies to the public’s confidence in the system, the Government’s confidence in the officials managing the system and, not least, the public’s confidence in the Government.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern correctly surmised the public had lost confidence since the unfortunate case of the Covid sisters unleashed a series of other apparent blunders.

It appears Ardern herself wanted new management a little earlier. It was at Cabinet on Monday, before the failings had been revealed, that she outlined Megan Woods’ new role — to take charge of the quarantine and managed isolation system. Woods is becoming the Labour Party’s Steven Joyce — the Ms Fix-it and safe pair of hands on whom the Prime Minister has come to rely for the really hard tasks that have broken others.

Last year, Woods took over responsibility for KiwiBuild from Phil Twyford and, this year his responsibility for chairing the election campaign team. The fact that Ardern has had to give responsibility for managed isolation to Woods at such a critical time in the electoral cycle illustrates the lack of depth on the Labour bench.

Clearly Woods’ appointment is a determination by Ardern not to let her reputation for crisis management be destroyed by the failings of director general of health Ashley Bloomfield or Health Minister David Clark.

It is technically true that Woods is not taking part of Clark’s existing health portfolio because it is a newly created responsibility by Ardern. But the crucial Covid-testing part of the management regime which previously reported to Bloomfield (and Clark) will now report to Air Commodore Darryn “Digby” Webb (and Woods) who was promoted this week to take charge of all aspects of quarantine.

If not quite a de facto vote of noconfidence in the previous oversight, it is a humiliating shift of responsibility for Bloomfield and Clark that was necessary.

The failures of the system were laid bare after it was revealed two women who had tested positive in Wellington had been given permission to leave managed isolation in Auckland without being tested.

That triggered a flood of disturbing stories, most recently one by Patrick Gower that the Pullman had held a wedding in a ballroom in which people in isolation had exercised.

But even more disturbing was what else it showed about the Ministry of Health’s systems and its lack of records and procedures.

Bloomfield has been unable to quickly produce figures on how many others granted a compassionate exemption had not been tested.

Even yesterday — four days after the case of the sisters — he was unable to give that figure and indicated the ministry would be gathering the statistics later.

As the public sector executive who announced on June 9 that Covid testing would be done on Day 3 and Day 12 of quarantine or managed isolation, and was responsible for the testing, he should have been updated daily on the numbers tested, where, when and what the results were.

That way he would have known that he had promised was being delivered. His minister should have been demanding those records daily as well.

That such basic systems were not in place was evidence that Bloomfield and Clark were leaving much to chance.

The story of a homeless man managing to join the back of a queue and get 14 days in a swish hotel on the Government, as relayed to National’s Michael Woodhouse by a medical source, may or may not be true. But, either way, it is believable. Nobody thought it couldn’t possibly be true because by then, confidence in the management system was shattered.

The attempted repair job has been impressive. Compassionate exemptions were suspended on Tuesday night before National had even had time to call for it.

Megan Woods and Darryn Webb gave a very credible press conference yesterday, clearly far more on top of their brief in one week than Bloomfield or Clark had been in the past three months. Information from the Ministry of Health has been hard to come by, despite protestations of transparency.

Epidemiologists have complained at the lack of meaningful data coming from the ministry to allow them to assess vulnerabilities.

Basic case details sought by journalists from the large communications team at the ministry are very difficult to obtain.

It took days before Bloomfield would even say that the sisters’ mother had died and they had sought an exemption to be with their father.

Poor Simon Bridges was pilloried for questioning Bloomfield’s record on transparency before the Epidemic Response Committee. He was merely exhibiting the frustration many who deal with the ministry have experienced for a long time.

National’s new leader Todd Muller gave a rousing speech in the House on the failures of the health system and Woodhouse has done an excellent job of highlighting them — through cases, not slogans.

It has been political gold for National to have a health issue to concentrate on, a departure from its usual focus on the Government’s ability to lead the economic recovery.

Ardern’s reputation for management of the health crisis is undisputed, even in Opposition territory.

In a recent Curia poll of 750 voters in Epsom (the seat safely held by Act’s David Seymour but almost 60 per cent party vote for National) 84 per cent of them thought the Government had done an excellent job of managing the public health aspects of Covid-19.

Not surprisingly, far fewer, 39 per cent, thought the Government had done an excellent job of managing the economic aspects of Covid-19.

The exposure this week of weaknesses in the health response, including her tolerance of weak ministers, potentially weakens Ardern.

The surge in members of the public getting tested in the past few days speaks to their lack of confidence that Covid-19 is under control.

Ardern has moved swiftly in order to regain control, but the failures have been such that there will be some loss of confidence in her Government.