Coronavirus - New Zealand
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Getting some interesting views and insights from my son and his partner who have just entered MIQ (returning from UK).
They are amazed and impressed with the organisation and detail they are experiencing. They are getting clear communication and expectations and everything is being backed up and supported with actions.
No wonder there is often confusion shown by authorities when something unusual happens as they know the procedures in place and it would be a puzzle to solve.
An example is when they went for their day 1 tests. Room phoned with 5 minutes notice. Knock on door. Escorted (at distance) to lift that was cleaned and locked just for them).Radio ahead to escort on receiving floor.. Put in lift and released. Received by next person and escorted to nurses room.Then reverse process back to room.
Even on arrival at the airport my son commented that the contrast to Heathrow in regard to taking Covid seriously was huge.
Have also been talking to some of those involved in running the facilities and it is more and more apparent that the tweaking of procedures and rules is 'continuous improvement' not because of slack design to start with but unforeseen stupidity and behaviour from the public.
If you play along everything is good but there is a constant stream of idiots trying their best to either break the system or think that it shouldn't apply to them.
Foe example they had a wristband colour system that designated your risk level so that someone high risk was kept away from doing something that others of low risk could do (eg the bussing to excercise). Idiots worked out that by 'losing' their armband they weren't being stopped. They have had to reverse that idea and make it the no armband equals high risk.This still feels odd to me, I really don't know why people are being moved around like that. Contrast to Oz where the nurses show up to your door with a trolley, and only the 1 nurse administering thew test comes within 6 feet of you. You don't leave your room, it's all done in the doorway. Why would you involve more people and have people using lifts etc? At the very least it seems to create more work for people, take longer , create extra admin etc - locking and sanitising lifts every time? Bussing to exercise? Seems like madness.
You are right in questioning that but I guess it comes down to which way is assessed as the most manageable. Do you take people out of their environment into a controlled one or send someone from a controlled environment into the unknown.? If you picture the corridors. lifts and shared spaces as no-mans land do you want the 'one to many' workers spending time there?
I would think that different organisations have modelled this differently and come up with different results. Probably not one being greatly better than the other.
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@majorrage said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial sounds like a prison to me.
Luckily the food and cells are of a higher standard.
Two weeks of three meals a day coming from various Federal St eateries makes it a little more tolerable. -
@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@majorrage said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial sounds like a prison to me.
Luckily the food and cells are of a higher standard.
Two weeks of three meals a day coming from various Federal St eateries makes it a little more tolerable.And someone doesn't try to shank you in the exercise yard...
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I work with a guy that moved back from the UK in Feb, stayed in a CBD hotel for quarantine. He had the opposite impression, the whole thing was a bit of a shambles and the chance of cross-contamination pretty high.
He got given a "high risk" band as he was from the UK, but was free to move around the hotel with other guests. He also jumped on a bus to exercise on day 2 and was on the same bus as people with low risk bands that were on day 12 of their stay which is absurd, so decided against going on that again.
Not sure if they've made changes since.
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@crucial I wonder if the level pf professionalism differs from facility to facility?
TBF to Heathrow, the level of scrutiny here needs to be higher, whereas over there, it would almost be assumed you have CV?
Similarly how NZ is able to report better on transmission sources, purely because of our low numbers we can investigate this, whereas other countries simply cant.
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@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial I wonder if the level pf professionalism differs from facility to facility?
There could be slight differences due to the actual person who is in charge but one advantage of using military is that on the whole they have a culture of following the prescribed orders and structures. Some may have a slightly 'slacker' attitude than others but they would get found out and marked accordingly. Those 'marks' get tallied up when promotion is on the cards and they all love getting more stripes.
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@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Getting some interesting views and insights from my son and his partner who have just entered MIQ (returning from UK).
They are amazed and impressed with the organisation and detail they are experiencing. They are getting clear communication and expectations and everything is being backed up and supported with actions.
No wonder there is often confusion shown by authorities when something unusual happens as they know the procedures in place and it would be a puzzle to solve.
An example is when they went for their day 1 tests. Room phoned with 5 minutes notice. Knock on door. Escorted (at distance) to lift that was cleaned and locked just for them).Radio ahead to escort on receiving floor.. Put in lift and released. Received by next person and escorted to nurses room.Then reverse process back to room.
Even on arrival at the airport my son commented that the contrast to Heathrow in regard to taking Covid seriously was huge.
Have also been talking to some of those involved in running the facilities and it is more and more apparent that the tweaking of procedures and rules is 'continuous improvement' not because of slack design to start with but unforeseen stupidity and behaviour from the public.
If you play along everything is good but there is a constant stream of idiots trying their best to either break the system or think that it shouldn't apply to them.
Foe example they had a wristband colour system that designated your risk level so that someone high risk was kept away from doing something that others of low risk could do (eg the bussing to excercise). Idiots worked out that by 'losing' their armband they weren't being stopped. They have had to reverse that idea and make it the no armband equals high risk.This still feels odd to me, I really don't know why people are being moved around like that. Contrast to Oz where the nurses show up to your door with a trolley, and only the 1 nurse administering thew test comes within 6 feet of you. You don't leave your room, it's all done in the doorway. Why would you involve more people and have people using lifts etc? At the very least it seems to create more work for people, take longer , create extra admin etc - locking and sanitising lifts every time? Bussing to exercise? Seems like madness.
You are right in questioning that but I guess it comes down to which way is assessed as the most manageable. Do you take people out of their environment into a controlled one or send someone from a controlled environment into the unknown.? If you picture the corridors. lifts and shared spaces as no-mans land do you want the 'one to many' workers spending time there?
I would think that different organisations have modelled this differently and come up with different results. Probably not one being greatly better than the other.
I imagine the escort still creates the "one-to-many" effect using that space, you're just adding the "many" to those same spaces.
I just would have thought that a basic principle would be for potentially infectious folk to stay contained in the space as much as possible.
@dogmeat I hear you on it only being CBD hotels. It is interesting that Oz just said "no window, no exercise, suck it up". I got lucky thanks to having the kids, I'm not sure how I would have gone with no fresh air for 2 weeks.
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@no-quarter said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
I work with a guy that moved back from the UK in Feb, stayed in a CBD hotel for quarantine. He had the opposite impression, the whole thing was a bit of a shambles and the chance of cross-contamination pretty high.
He got given a "high risk" band as he was from the UK, but was free to move around the hotel with other guests. He also jumped on a bus to exercise on day 2 and was on the same bus as people with low risk bands that were on day 12 of their stay which is absurd, so decided against going on that again.
Not sure if they've made changes since.
It's one of the improvements made when the theory didn't quite work out. Previously no band meant no risk (and was the biggest number of people). If someone didn't spot the band because of clothing or something and they looked like the were doing the right thing then a mistake could be made. They reversed that so that no band means high risk and you have to show your band if you want low risk 'priveleges'
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Interesting article about science in general, and genome sequencing in particular, in NZ and what the scientific world can learn from it.
This is just one example of how science is helpful and how it's used:
‘Smoking gun’ At the end of January, in the quieter midsummer period that follows Christmas and the New Year, there was the mysterious case of the rubbish bin lid. A new set of Covid cases had been announced at The Pullman, a hotel-turned-isolation facility run by the New Zealand government to house citizens returning from overseas. Those cases had sparked a flurry of tracing efforts, and anxiety over whether they’d require a new lockdown. But as he watched the Pullman, Dr Joshua Freeman, the acting infection prevention and control director for Canterbury District Health Board, was reminded of another case from November 2020. That scenario had dealt with two residents in the country’s managed isolation and quarantine [MIQ] facilities – David and Jane*. David had caught Covid-19 on a plane en-route to New Zealand – then, at some point during his stay, transmitted it to Jane, who happened to be staying in the neighbouring room. Genomic sequencing and analysis by Geoghegan’s team had revealed who gave the virus to whom: David had sat close to two infected people on the plane, and his viral genome was similar enough to conclude it was a direct descendant of theirs. Jane’s, in turn, resembled David’s, but was another step removed from the plane. Even with that knowledge, however, the precise point of transmission between David and Jane had remained mysterious: during their stay at the isolation hotel, the pair had never been outside their rooms or in a common area at the same time. At that stage, many experts believed Covid19 was primarily spread through larger droplets. “Like ballistic missiles,” Freeman says – fired out when people cough, sneeze, sing or talk, and falling to the ground within a metre or two. So public health workers looked for a surface that David and Jane might have shared. Imagine those missiles again: landing, undetonated, on a doorknob or handrail. Finally, the team found a single surface – a shared rubbish bin lid – that both had touched. But by January, the rubbish bin explanation wasn’t satisfying to Freeman. For one thing, the two had touched the lid 20 hours apart – an unusually long time for the virus to survive on a surface. More recent research showed surface transmission, especially over that timeframe, was extremely unlikely – maybe even approaching implausible. With almost no other “smoking gun” cases of surface transmission around the world, this case mattered. Freeman began combing back through the CCTV records and notes kept by public health teams, looking for other possibilities. “I was just sort of scouring it, going, how on earth did this happen?” he said. “I don’t think it’s a rubbish bin lid, but how else could it have happened?” Finally, he found it: “Swabbing. There’s just an entry in the morning saying ‘swabbing’.” On the 12th day of their two weeks in isolation, both David and Jane had been visited at their rooms by nurses, to test them for Covid. Freeman returned to the CCTV footage, and there it was on the videotape. The nurses had first knocked on the door of David: he opened his door, talked for a few moments, and lowered his mask for a swab. Less than a minute later, the nurses moved on to Jane. As Dave’s door swung closed, Freeman says, would have acted like a fan, pushing contaminated air out into the hallway. Testing the air pressure in the two hotel rooms found that pressure in the rooms was positive, meaning air would flow out into the corridor. Once there, it could remain in the stagnant hallway air, until Jane opened her door, also greeted the nurses, then lowered her mask.
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@taniwharugby what a year!
What time is the announcement?
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Some interesting reflections in this article on the possible tourism industry impacts for NZ destinations of the Trans Ta$man bubble: https://www.benjepatterson.co.nz/winter-will-still-be-tough-for-some-destinations/
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@godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@donsteppa Tourism NZ was basically demanding the bubble with claims of large financial impact, but their analysis was silent on the impact of NZers going to Australia.
Yep, the Trans Ta$man bubble is a great thing to do on many levels, family reunification being one especially. However, I don’t see it being the panacea for the tourism sector that it is often proclaimed as. The bubble probably will “save Queenstown” - while setting back the sector in other places. The joys of the Covid times...
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Capacity is going to be a big unknown in places like Queenstown and Wanaka that traditionally rely on itinerant labour.
Skifields struggled last year to keep up staff wise and the lucrative parts of the operation (Ski School) can't operate at anywhere near the levels they should. -
@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Capacity is going to be a big unknown in places like Queenstown and Wanaka that traditionally rely on itinerant labour.
Skifields struggled last year to keep up staff wise and the lucrative parts of the operation (Ski School) can't operate at anywhere near the levels they should.Hopefully that can be addressed in the circa 40% of MIQ spaces that the Trans Ta$man bubble will free up.
I suppose the big news is now in about ten minutes time...
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@donsteppa said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:
Capacity is going to be a big unknown in places like Queenstown and Wanaka that traditionally rely on itinerant labour.
Skifields struggled last year to keep up staff wise and the lucrative parts of the operation (Ski School) can't operate at anywhere near the levels they should.Hopefully that can be addressed in the circa 40% of MIQ spaces that the Trans Ta$man bubble will free up.
I suppose the big news is now in about ten minutes time...
April 19