Wellington, August 17, 2020
There are nine new Covid-19 cases in the community today (August 17, 2020) and none in managed isolation. Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said at a media conference.
He said that seven of the new cases were linked to the Auckland cluster, while two cases are under investigation.
Covid-19 by numbers
As of 6 pm yesterday (August 17), 86 people had been moved to quarantine facilities.
There are five people in hospital – two in Auckland Hospital and three in Middlemore Hospital.
The three persons in Middlemore were transferred from the Jet Park facility and were connected to the existing cluster.
The total number of confirmed cases is 1280, with 78 active cases, of which 58 are related to the community cluster and the remainder were imported cases.
Dr Bloomfield said that laboratories and testing stations were experiencing unprecedented levels of demand and there can be delays of 48 hours, with the priority to those who are at high risk.
“Testing at the border for the workforce at airports and ports continue to increase,” he said, adding that there is now a dedicated testing team at the Ports of Auckland with extended hours. Testing of all government agency frontline workers are either complete or about to be completed, he said.
Over the next few days, a few thousand workers at the Port of Tauranga will be tested, he said.
He said more than 2100 staff working in managed isolation facilities in Auckland have now been tested as of yesterday.
Contract Tracing progressing
Dr Bloomfield said that contact tracing of positive cases is continuing, including follow-up of casual and close contacts.
“Causal contacts should be wary of symptoms but that does not necessarily mean there was a high risk. Some locations of interest over the last two days are: The Botany mall between 1 and 2 pm on August 11, Buttabean Motivation between 515 am and 6 am on August 10, Eden Junior Rugby Club between 530 pm and 630 pm on August 11, and a Guinea Pig show at the Auckland Cavy Club on Hall Road between 10 am and 2 pm on August 8, 2020.
“The important note here is that the risk from these locations is invariably low … this is simply of us casting a wide net and to make sure anyone who might have been in these locations is aware and to be aware of symptoms,” Dr Bloomfield said.
Trace App gaining popularity
He said that 68,000 users registered with the Covid Tracer App during the past 24 hours.
There were now more than 210,000 QR codes generated, an increase of over 16,000 in the last 24 hours, he said. There were also more than 833,000 poster scans in the last day.
Dr Bloomfield said that testing at the Mt Wellington Americold facility will take time to process and results were expected during the week.
“I should say that even if some of those swabs return a positive test, the challenge will be in determining the direction of any contamination that might have occurred and it may be difficult to get any RNA material from those environmental swabs,” he said.
No evidence about frozen food
Dr Bloomfield said that food safety teams have reviewed evidence around the world and concluded that there is no evidence of transmission through contact with frozen goods and packaging.
He commended people for stepping forward to get tested to aid in efforts to ringfence the existing cluster and cases.
“Testing is already happening of managed isolation staff, but they were just now scaling up those efforts. What was scaling up was the size of the teams and frequency with which they could go back to into each facility. People are anxiously waiting for their results,” he said.
He reiterated that there was heavy demand and the importance of prioritising those with high risk.
“There may have been slightly longer delays over the weekend because many GPs were shut, because they pass the information through, so my expectation would be that over coming days that wait will drop,” he added.
Updating Cabinet Ministers
Dr Bloomfield said that he has kept the Health Minister and the State Cabinet informed on testing of border staff and managed isolation staff.
“There was clearly a dissonance between what the prime minister thought was happening and what was happening on the ground, but that does not mean that we were not providing information; it may be in the way that information was communicated,” he said.
Speaking about the miscommunication on testing border staff, he said, “Remembering that we were in Alert Level 1, testing was voluntary and like other New Zealanders, many of those workers did not necessarily feel that there was a need or imperative to get a test, particularly because everyday they were being checked for symptoms including temperature checks. I do not think that there has been a failure.”
Melbourne workers of Americold
Testing results of the Melbourne-based Americold workers were also expected today, he said.
“We still do not have any particular clues as to the origin of the outbreak. Our first focus is on the mapping the extent of it and managing the outbreak, once we have the complete picture we are much more likely to then go back and trace the origin of it. We may find some clues as to where, but we may still quite answer the question of how it was transmitted,” Dr Bloomfield said.
–Published under a Special Agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
Earlier today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced shifting the date of the General Election to October 17, 2020. That report can be read here.
