New Zealand cases rise as possible Melbourne link investigated
New Zealand has confirmed seven new coronavirus cases, while authorities are investigating whether the Auckland outbreak is linked to a Melbourne cold storage facility.
The country now has 56 active cases, including 37 from community transmission, and is scrambling to limit the spread of the outbreak after its 102 day run of no community transmission ended last Tuesday.
NZ Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.Credit:Getty Images
Of those 37 cases, 35 had been confirmed to be linked to the Auckland cluster and the other two are both suspected to be linked to the cluster.
A total of 54 people linked to the Auckland cluster are now in managed quarantine to control the spread of the virus and a total of 86 per cent of these people’s close contacts had been reached within 48 hours by contact tracers.
On Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the earliest case identified in this outbreak was a worker at an Americold storage facility in Mt Wellington, Auckland, who became sick on July 31st, though that person may not be the origin of the outbreak.
To date, five staff members and one contractor who visited the Mt Wellington site have tested positive for COVID-19.
An Americold cool storage facility in Australia.Credit:Pat Scala
At a press conference on Saturday, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that as part of the investigation into the source of the outbreak in New Zealand - which has still not been determined - he had been in contact with health officials in Victoria about a recent outbreak at an Americold cold storage facility in Melbourne.
"You’ll be aware that we have been doing some environmental testing as well at the Americold store in Mt Wellington, that is being processed today," Bloomfield said.
"I have also had contact from my counterpart in Victoria who has linked me with their lab there, that is doing some genome sequencing on some [coronavirus] cases of employees in an Americold cool store there in Melbourne, just again to see if there is any possible linkage there, so we are looking at that possibility, it’s part of the overall puzzle and we are leaving no stone unturned."
The possibilty that the virus is linked to the Melbourne facility is just one of the avenues being examined by New Zealand authorities as they scramble to determine the source of the outbreak.
Bloomfield said that genome sequencing indicated there was no link between current community outbreak in New Zealand and the outbreak from earlier this year.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said it was “very heartening” that the outbreak and cases all remained connected to one cluster and pleaded with all Auckland residents to follow the rules of the level three lockdown.
“We all want to be out of level three as quickly as we can, people following the rules is the best way to ensure that,” he said.
“We want to get businesses open and operating again, we want to get people back to work as quickly as we can.”
New Zealand processed 23,846 tests on Friday, a new record for the country, and has conducted more than 49,000 tests over the last three days.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has to decide by Monday whether or not to delay the country’s national election, which is due to be held on September 19.
Ardern said on Friday that New Zealand was 'going hard and going early' after learning from the coronavirus outbreak in Australia, as she extended stage-three restrictions in Auckland by a further 12 days and kept the rest of the country under stage-two restrictions.
"We have always taken a precautionary approach because if you make a wrong move, with COVID, we can see very easily the long term impact of that particularly in terms of how long, as a consequence of the wrong move, you can spend with restrictions. Australia has demonstrated that to us, we are looking at the experience of others in making our decisions,” she said.