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Bloomfield confirmed the two cases are woman - one in their 30s and another in her 40s - who are family.
They arrived on June 7 and stayed in a hotel in Auckland. They were permitted to travel to Wellington in a private vehicle on June 13, on compassionate grounds.
They had a private vehicle dropped to the hotel and drove to Wellington with no contact with anyone else. They didn't use public facilities and have only been with a single family member since arriving in Wellington.
One had been experiencing symptoms, the other was symptom-free.
Testing in Wellington was part of their agreed exemption plan.
Local public health staff are now testing and isolating others at risk - just the one additional family member.
Other potential contacts include travellers on the same flight from Brisbane, and people at the isolation facility, including staff.
Staff at the isolation facility who were in contact with the woman are being stood down and tested.
"Obviously, the team here that deals with the exemptions process has a great deal of sympathies with families who are coming to terms with a dying relative." Today's news confirms why they decided not to allow exemptions to attend funerals or tangi.
Regardless of when people entered the country - level 2 or level 1 - there's no restrictions on funeral sizes. If they're still in that 14 day period, they can't attend a funeral.
The women did everything asked of them, he said.
The funeral will be deferred until they're finished the 14 day period, which has just restarted.
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A couple of important points moving forward:
There's a "clear set of criteria" applied for people seeking leave to attend a funeral, he said. Compassionate exemptions aren't granted for people to attend funerals, but visit a dying friend or relative or grieve with family.
Anybody leaving a facility for whatever reason needs to have a negative result.
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@Bovidae how can we enforce that, unless it is a requirement for them to be granted entry to be tested before leaving, but even then, they woudl need to have isolated after testing, plus they could catch it on the plane...
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It appears we learned nothing from the looseness of the original border controls pre-lockdown. I'm pretty dark about this TBH. All that trauma that we went through, only for the outcome to be jeopardised because the powers that be won't be as tough with the outside world as they were with us. Grow a pair, tell anybody coming in that closed means closed, and that isolation is mandatory, because good faith belief that they are virus free is worthless. If they don't like it, don't come, and any of the media that run sob stories to guilt trip us into exceptions can fuck right off.
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@taniwharugby It's not specific just to us but is a weakness in the process with current worldwide airline travel, particularly if your reason for travelling is time-dependent (e.g., to visit a dying relative).
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It seems to me that the risk lies more with the people they were in contact with before, during and immediately after their flights, and at the managed isolation facility in Auckland. Apart from that one family member they're staying with, I don't think there's any risk of anyone being infected after they left the facility in Auckland if they respected the conditions of the agreed plan (which included not using any public facilities).
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@JC said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I'm pretty dark about this TBH
As is everyone here at work, social media is blowing up (correctly for a change)
Reckon this is a big dent for Labour.
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If they didn't have contact with anyone after they left the Novotel in Auckland, what's the problem? The one family member they're staying with is now also in self-isolation for 14 days.
We were always going to get new cases from overseas; that's why they have the contact tracing in place and extra testing. In this particular, exceptional case, the test was just done somewhere else and their self-isolation is done at home (with the 14-day period re-starting).
Not a big deal.
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@Stargazer said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
If they didn't have contact with anyone after they left the Novotel in Auckland, what's the problem? The one family member they're staying with is now also in self-isolation for 14 days.
We were always going to get new cases from overseas; that's why they have the contact tracing in place and extra testing. In this particular, exceptional case, the test was just done somewhere else and their self-isolation is done at home (with the 14-day period re-starting).
Not a big deal.
The virus lives on surfaces for hours, so people contact is moot.
We either have a locked down border, or we don't. As with before the lockdown, it appears we are not locking down the border.
It's important as we have destroyed people's liveliehoods with the lockdown, 1000 people a day joining the dole. This sort of wishy washy approach to a quarantine means we will end up in another lockdown - or if we can't afford to do that again, letting the virus spread freely and making the last few months a complete waste of time.
It's a big deal.
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@JC said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
It appears we learned nothing from the looseness of the original border controls pre-lockdown. I'm pretty dark about this TBH. All that trauma that we went through, only for the outcome to be jeopardised because the powers that be won't be as tough with the outside world as they were with us. Grow a pair, tell anybody coming in that closed means closed, and that isolation is mandatory, because good faith belief that they are virus free is worthless. If they don't like it, don't come, and any of the media that run sob stories to guilt trip us into exceptions can fuck right off.
Labour couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery! The quarantine is 14 days to prevent exactly whats happened here.
How mad would you be if your business had gone broke and you'd lost your house due to the lockdown to see this sort of crap? Unbelievable.
Makes me wonder what sort of lockdown was in place for the film crew as well, if the rumours of them wandering around Wellington freely were true.
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@Stargazer said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@Kirwan What surfaces are we talking about, since leaving Auckland? They drove straight to Wellington, and didn't use any public facilities. They were travelling in a private vehicle.
If you have to trust someone's word they didn't leave their car, you have taken a massive risk. One stop at a cafe and you have another outbreak.
Incredible risk.
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I wonder how far off effective border testing on arrival actually is? Something immediate (24hrs max) that we can actually trust
I wonder how many people they have let out of quarantine early and didn't have to tell us about because they were lucky they stayed negative?
Coronavirus - New Zealand