Coronavirus Covid 19: What were the movements and contacts for the Air NZ case in China?

An Air NZ crew member could have caught Covid-19 in New Zealand before flying to China and tested positive, says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins.

“At this point in the investigation, you leave all the possibilities open.”

Preliminary investigations showed that the person’s movements in New Zealand over the past two weeks appear to have been limited to Auckland, he said.

His circle of close contacts also appears to be “relatively small,” although he will receive an update later this morning.

The person’s positive result emerged yesterday, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said they tested negative on November 18 before testing positive on November 22 as part of routine tests while in China.

Ardern said the person was asymptomatic and was being reexamined.

Hipkins said this morning that the person had developed mild symptoms, but the rest of the crew remained asymptomatic.

They were returning to New Zealand and they will all isolate themselves when they land at 6am tomorrow morning.

“Contact tracing has already started for the past few weeks for the person’s time in New Zealand,” Hipkins said.

“They had a pretty busy international flight schedule during that time, so they spent a lot of time away, but obviously we also looked at what they were doing while they were here.”

The person’s flight schedule in the past month included flights to Australia and China, he said.

“Coming back from a higher risk place like China, they should be doing a 48 hour withdrawal and a negative test at the end of 48 hours before they can return to the community.

“We are checking that all those things have happened.”

He said genomic sequencing, which has proven to be a vital tool in the Covid-19 response during recent outbreaks, would take place as soon as the crew member landed in New Zealand.

“All the crew will be isolated and then we will leave from there.”

Hipkins said that work was being done, given the vaccines that kept emerging, to decide how much population would need to be vaccinated before travel restrictions could be lifted.

“One of the things we’re looking at is the percentage of the population before we can remove all travel restrictions. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 100%. We may never get to 100%.”

But he said some form of travel restrictions is likely to remain in effect for the next 18 months.

“The sooner we can remove the restrictions, the better.”

He added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was talking with other countries about an international system to vaccinate people in a certified way.

“We need to know if someone has been vaccinated or not. We would like to know that as part of our general protection measures. I imagine that will be the subject of a lot of diplomatic discussion.”

Part of that could be a technology fix, he said.

The NZ Covid app could not only show if someone had been tested and the result of that test, but it could also show if someone had been vaccinated and with what vaccine.

“We are looking at how technology can be used to verify test results, etc.”