PM warns frontline firms: Test staff or else

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has issued an explicit reminder to private firms with staff on the frontline: Test your staff or face the consequences.

This comes after a security guard working at the Grand Millennium MIQ facility tested positive for Covid-19 — he was not vaccinated.

No new community cases were announced yesterday.

Ardern said she was “very reassured” about the testing regime across the agencies the Government has responsibility for, such as Customs, and Immigration.

“But the orders make it very explicit: If you are an employer, for instance, a private enterprise, and your workforce is covered by a testing order, you have the responsibility to make sure they are being tested.”

The orders, she said, were “very explicit” on this issue.

“Some individuals are working for private employers; there, the responsibility sits with their employer to make sure that that workforce is being tested.”

That was a legal obligation, she said. “And there is a penalty regime for employers who are not doing that.”

That penalty, according to the Covid-19 Public Health Response Law, is an infringement fee of $300 or a fine not exceeding $1000.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said there were more than 12,000 active employees in a register and 4300 inactive employees, who were not currently working at the border but had done so in the past.

In addition, large companies’ own record-keeping systems contained a further 4000 workers.

“All relevant employers have had a specific duty to keep records of testing since last year. However, last month, to make the system clearer and easier to administer, I signalled my intention to make reporting to the register mandatory for all relevant employers at the border.

“Ministry officials have been engaging with the border sector on the plan, and I expect to be in position to make a decision and any amendments to the order shortly,” Hipkins said.

The Government contracts out many businesses to work on the frontline, including private security.

The security guard who tested positive was not someone who was against vaccinations, Ardern said. The guard was initially said to have missed two appointments due to “personal reasons”.

The guard is the second Grand Millennium worker to test positive in weeks.

Meanwhile, Ardern is offering reassurances to those people travelling from India to New Zealand, before the two-week travel exemption from India comes into effect.

“They’ll have the same level of precaution and care as we do for every flight.”

She said the Government treated every international arrival as if they potentially have Covid-19.

According to Ministry of Health data from the past two weeks, 55 people who have travelled from India to New Zealand have tested positive for Covid-19 — 73 per cent of all arrivals. “If that number of people from any country were coming in with Covid, that would give us cause to pause and look at mitigations to try and reduce that risk,” Ardern said.

Her comment follows criticism from Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, who said on Twitter: “Our ethnic communities of South Asian origin need to know race isn’t a factor in our Covid-19 risk management”.

Ardern said the travel suspension was not country-specific.

“It is about the cases we are seeing currently from that region.”

Six new cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation were announced yesterday — five of them arrivals from India via the United Arab Emirates. The other person came from the Philippines via Singapore.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border daily is now eight.