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There should be concern about the latest small cluster of Covid-19, say an epidemiologist and Covid-19 modeler.
Photo: AFP
The country’s second current group, now of six people and 31 close contacts, is connected to a man who turned out to have the disease after completing his period of isolation and twice tested negative.
Two of the three family members who tested positive this week emerged from managed isolation in Christchurch and returned home to Auckland on the same flight as positive.
Then another family member joined them on a trip to Taupō, where they were joined by 18 others from the Bay of Plenty, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton.
Work is still being done to trace the source of his infection, one possibility is that the man had an unusually long incubation period.
A Covid-19 modeler, Shaun Hendy, says that advice on the length of isolation should be adjusted as more is learned about the disease and its possible incubation period.
“We do not know precisely when the infections occurred, there is still the possibility that something went wrong, there was some mixing or some contact between people in the isolation facility,” he said.
“There should be some concern about the latter case and I think that, in particular, because it is distributed throughout the country, it is not limited to one part of the country.”
But he says, “This is not the worst case.”
Hendy says she doesn’t expect many secondary cases from this group.
“We have detected this relatively early, so the contacts of these cases will be entering the period now where they will be infectious.”
Meanwhile, epidemiologist Professor Sir David Skegg said Morning report the newer group has the potential to be very serious.
“This is just a reminder that removal is a process, not a destination.”
This will continue to happen and it is essential that we can stay on top of the cases, said Professor Skegg.
He says we can’t be complacent.
“We shouldn’t think we’ve beaten this, we haven’t, it’s wreaking havoc around the world and will continue to show up in New Zealand from time to time.”
Professor Skegg does not believe that managed isolation should last more than 14 days.
But he says there may be a need for different and stricter procedures for people traveling from the UK, US, Europe and India.
