Covid 19 coronavirus: Kiwi father in LA can’t get quarantine exemptions dies

The father of a New Zealand woman living in Los Angeles looking for a quarantine exemption to see him again has died.

Rachel Henderson was urgently seeking an exemption from the mandatory two-week isolation period that is imposed on all those who go abroad.

Her father Colin, 73, was in the Christchurch Hospital intensive care unit with kidney failure and was in a ventilator-induced coma.

He has since died and Henderson had booked a Sunday flight from Los Angeles to New Zealand.

“I resigned myself to spending 14 days alone without my family to make the proper arrangements for my father,” she said.

“We have no control over anything from here in the United States. My father lies in a morgue, with the results of death pending.”

It comes after five previously rejected requests for people to leave mandatory isolation to see that their dying relatives had been reversed.

The Health Ministry announced yesterday that it had completed a review of 32 applications for a waiver of compassionate-administered isolation.

All were initially rejected, including that of Oliver Christiansen, who successfully challenged the decision in Superior Court.

He was able to spend 36 hours with his dying father, Anthony Christiansen, after Judge Tracey Walker said the ministry was wrong.

Henderson was not so lucky: “It is outrageous …” I am defeated, “she said.

She sought help from Christiansen’s attorney, who said she probably would not receive an exemption because her father was in the hospital, increasing the risk that she may expose vulnerable people to Covid-19.

“I understand and would never want to put anyone at risk, but it’s heartbreaking anyway,” he told the Herald earlier this week.

While fully supporting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s approach to the Covid-19 crisis, she said it was “unacceptable” that no compassionate compromise be made for those with dying family members.

“Alive [in the USA], with our current president, I wish I was in New Zealand with such excellent management, “said Henderson.

“I am not in any way critical of how you have handled the situation, but in these particular cases we just want to access our loved ones who are dying.”

On Tuesday, Ardern defended the decisions that had been made around the compassionate exemption, but said it was correct to go back and review them, saying the cases were “devastating.”

But they didn’t want to duplicate people’s pain by allowing unsafe situations, and some were very complicated.

Twenty people who had entered the country and had been quarantined had tested positive since then, showing the risks involved, he said.