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ANALYSIS: Discovery of a subset of infections related to a “bereavement event” could extend the long tail of the Auckland cold store group, reports Marc Daalder
Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield has said officials are on “orange” alert after the discovery of a new “subset” of Covid-19 cases in Auckland.
The new grouping of cases dates back to a “mourning event” attended by someone in the Mount Roskill church mini-group and a subsequent funeral and 14 cases are associated. Among them are a student from St Dominic’s Catholic College and a bus driver on the Northern Expressway.
What does this new sub-group of a mini-group mean for our answer?
READ MORE:
* Covid-19: student who tested positive in an undisclosed contact, says Hipkins
* Coronavirus: Six new cases, four of them linked to ‘mourning activities’
* Coronavirus: Why a case of ‘yellow flag’ is delaying Auckland’s move towards Covid-19 alert levels
For starters, it’s the first time we’ve seen more than a handful of community cases spread in a Level 2 setting.
While the healthcare system has prepared for this scenario by increasing contact tracing and testing capabilities, this will put them to the test in real life.
“The two fundamental parts of that will be testing, and we know our system has good testability. Extensive testing, more extensive than we could do otherwise,” Bloomfield said.
This includes the casual contact test – those who might have briefly shared a bus or shop space with a confirmed case, but did not meet the fairly strict criteria (being within 1.5 meters of someone for more than 15 minutes ) to be classified as a close contact.
RNZ
Health Minister Chris Hipkins says it has become clear that some close contacts from the church subgroup Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship were not previously disclosed, including a student who recently tested positive.
At the beginning of the pandemic, only close contacts were tested.
Second, that contact tracing ability and that ability to bring people from all over the country to the Public Health Unit was maintained. The mainstay will continue to be testing, isolation, isolation support, including the use of managed isolation facilities and quarantine facility in Auckland and of course rapid isolation contact tracing. “
What officials will be looking to do is make sure the most recent small outbreak has been identified, with all cases and close contacts identified and isolated.
The subgroup has been detected long before the parent church group, which could facilitate this.
Although the first potential infection event in the Mount Roskill group of churches occurred on August 7, officials did not identify it until almost three weeks later.
This time, the index event was a visit on September 2 by members of the church group to the home of a grieving person.
The virus was then transmitted through a funeral and out to infect a total of 14 people at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Still, the fact that it was announced only a week after the event that originated it indicates that officials have a strong chance of stopping the broadcast.
The incubation period for Covid-19, the time between infection and the possibility of infecting others, is believed to be between five and six days on average. That means there is a good chance that those infected on September 2 infected others, but that second generation is less likely to have transmitted the virus further.
All 108 close contacts of the 14 cases have been contacted and are self-isolating, Bloomfield said. If officials are quick enough, they can identify other transmission cases and isolate them as well, preventing the subgroup from growing in size like the church group has.
Of the 171 community cases in the second outbreak, at least 43 of them have been linked to that group of churches.
However, if the subgroup does not isolate itself fast enough, we could see a repeat of the church group.
Of the 22 community cases reported in the last week, only three have been linked to the main group of cold rooms, meaning that it has largely been isolated. But the long delay between the church group’s initiation and its identification has meant that the virus was able to be transmitted over several incubation periods and officials are still finding new cases.
One of these new cases was a close contact of another case. They had been evaluated, but they went to the home of the bereaved person and started this subgroup.
The hope is that the members of this new subgroup have not repeated the same thing in other social or work events, without knowing that they had been infected at the funeral.
If so, that could extend the much-discussed “long tail” of the outbreak a little further and further delay a downward movement in alert levels for Auckland or even the rest of the country.
Bloomfield was candid when asked what color his metaphoric board was, admitting that the subgroup was “raising some flags.”
“It’s blinking orange and it won’t blink or turn solid green until we’re really sure we have this well-enclosed bud. I must say that this grouping here that appeared around this duel is the only additional tentacle that came out of Mount Roskill and not there are others that have emerged in the last week, “he said.
The hope is that it remains that way.
