Worker at New Zealand quarantine hotel tests positive for Covid-19

A new case of Covid-19 separate from the main cluster has been confirmed in New Zealand, with the infected person identified as a maintenance worker in a quarantine hotel in Auckland.

On Tuesday, 13 new cases were confirmed, with 12 relating to the Auckland cluster, which now numbers 69 in total.

One new case not related to the Auckland cluster has been discovered, with a hotel worker at the Rydges hotel testing positive on 16 August.

The hotel worker attended two church services before he was diagnosed and his contacts are being traced, authorities said.

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“A new case not linked to the existing cluster shows a second border breach has occurred since New Zealand achieved elimination,” said Dr David Welch at the centre for computational evolution at the University of Auckland.

On Monday, prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced she was delaying the general election by four weeks as a result of the new outbreak.

Genome sequencing has revealed that the strain of the virus the worker became infected with correlates to a guest from the US who stayed at the hotel in quarantine in late July and tested positive for Covid-19 on 31 July.

The director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, said no-one else related to the man had tested positive, and it was believed he has not spread the disease.

Bloomfield said the man performed maintenance on hotel rooms between bookings after the rooms had been cleaned, and had no direct contact with guests.

“The genome sequencing indicates his case is not linked to the current outbreak in the community but is most closely linked to a positive case that was in the Rydges and identified was on 31st of July. This is a returnee from the USA,” Bloomfield said.

Megan Woods, who is overseeing quarantine for the government, said a wider outbreak had not occurred at the Rydges Hotel.

All staff at Rydges hotel had now been tested, the minister said.

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“The discovery of this second transmission into the community illustrates the challenge in keeping the virus at the border and reinforces the need for regular testing of workers at the border and MIQ facilities, whether they have symptoms or not.” said Professor Shaun Hendy, director of Te Pūnaha Matatini.

“It also shows the value of routine and rapid sequencing of all cases in New Zealand.”

Woods said the room the US returnee stayed in at the Rydges hotel had not been stayed in since she left, and had undergone industrial cleaning since her departure.

There was no evidence the infection occurred through “person-to-person contact”, Woods said, meaning it most likely spread through contaminated services.

Earlier on Tuesday Ardern revealed that although she thought all border workers were being tested for Covid-19, in reality, less than 40% were.

New Zealand is in the midst of its first Covid-19 resurgence after eliminating the virus in June and going more than 102 days with no community outbreak.

Health authorities are investigating the ports, the international airport and a cool store that handled freight for clues to where the virus entered New Zealand, but have warned the “index case” of the Auckland cluster could never be found. The cool store facility in west Auckland has been effectively “ruled out” as a potential site of infection.

Some 90% of the cases in the current cluster are Māori or Pasifika, and these communities have become the subject of intense harassment on social media.

Ardern told Radio New Zealand on Tuesday that prior to the outbreak it was her understanding that everyone working on the border was being tested, whether they were symptomatic or not.

A report released last week found that 60% of border staff had never been tested, with Ardern saying she had been told that some asymptomatic staff were “reluctant”

Ardern admitted that testing at the border was not “ as comprehensive as it should have been” but that no one was to blame. On Monday the director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the failure to border test comprehensively was the fault of “miscommunication”.

The minister of health, Chris Hipkins, expressed regret that rigorous testing had not occurred on the border, but said all front-facing border workers had been tested by the end of last week, and the priority is now shifting to the ports, with a mobile testing site erected at the Port of Tauranga.

“[Testing] does need to be mandated,” Ardern said. “It needs to stand alongside PPE and daily health checks”

Epidemiologists in New Zealand have criticised the government’s border testing regime as “very disappointing” and “complacent”, saying the borders and quarantine hotels were the highest-risk entry points for Covid-19.

Mandatory weekly testing for port and border staff has now been introduced, Hipkins said.

But Ardern cautioned against placing too much faith in weekly testing. “A weekly testing regime is not foolproof,” she said.