Covid 19 coronavirus: close contacts of community cases with negative test

All close contacts of the Northland community case have been tested and all have returned negative results.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said this was “encouraging.”

There have been no new cases in the community related to the Northland woman testing positive for Covid-19 on Sunday after leaving managed isolation at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel on January 13.

Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield said there were “encouraging signs” in Northland, but the situation was still developing.

“We are not exhaling yet.”

Close contacts of the Northland woman will remain in isolation for the full 14 days even though the test came back negative.

The 353 guests of the Pullman Hotel, along with the woman, are being contacted and examined; so far all staff and guests have tested negative.

There are also four new cases in the currently managed isolation facilities. The total number of active cases is 68, including that of the community.

When will NZ get a vaccine?

Hipkins said he wanted to reaffirm that Medsafe’s “painstaking” approval process had no impact on the arrival of the vaccines in the country.

He also reiterated that the vaccination program would likely be a “one-year process” and that vaccines would not initially be available to the general population, as the priority was border workers and their close contacts.

Hipkins said that “if you do the math,” the vaccination program meant 10 million shots because they required two doses, so it would take at least 200 days to complete the overall vaccination campaign.

“It will be a numbers game.”

He said he was not “blind” to what was happening to the rest of the world and the delays other countries were experiencing.

Bloomfield said the vaccines had to go through Medsafe approval, in addition to international processes, to ensure their use was safe in New Zealand’s unique circumstances where we have no community transmission.

He said the vaccines were being used in other countries under emergency approvals, rather than the full approval process.

Hipkins said it was difficult to argue on humanitarian grounds against countries with widespread transmission that get vaccinated first.

He said he did not see rapid changes in border restrictions for people who received the Pfizer vaccine and who entered New Zealand.

“I don’t think it’s likely to be sudden or fast.”

There will be a paid ad campaign before the vaccination program “when needed,” Hipkins said. He didn’t have a budget for the campaign at hand.

Bloomfield said the campaign had two parts: first making sure information was available about the vaccine and then a proactive campaign.

“You can start to see that in the next few weeks.”

The vaccination sites will likely be similar to the test sites, Hipkins said.

Bloomfield said they had been doing population surveys on vaccination concerns: 70 percent said they would get it if they had good information, 20 percent would get it with more information, and 10 percent said they would not get vaccinated.

Test times

Yesterday more than 10,800 tests were processed.

The more than 1.5 million tests completed since the pandemic began means that we have the highest rate of tests per positive case in the world, along with Australia.

Bloomfield said Healthline had short wait times and demand for testing at Northland test sites had decreased.

There are 327 people who are confirmed in the places of interest that the Northland community case visited; 127 of these people tested negative. People should isolate themselves and get tested if they were in those places, Bloomfield said.

Yesterday, contact trackers had identified 16 possible close contacts of the woman and of those 15 had tested negative, including her husband.

Bloomfield told Mike Hosking of Newstalk ZB today that he did not believe that the MIQ facilities were “too flexible” in handling returnees, but that procedures to close the gaps that came to light were still being reviewed.

He said that any expert comment that highlighted failures in the facility’s operation was always taken seriously.

A total of 102,000 people had passed through MIQ since the facility to handle returning kiwis was established last year.

Bloomfield remained confident that the Pfizer vaccine would arrive in this country in the first quarter.

Medsafe was expected to give approval for the vaccine next Tuesday at the earliest.

“We were confident in getting the vaccine when we said we would get it,” he said.

The Pullman hotel, where the Northland woman was believed to be infected, was audited yesterday. Bloomfield said it was now considered “really unlikely” that she was infected through the facility’s air conditioning system.

“Yesterday we did an audit at the Pullman hotel on infection prevention control. We have sped up a look at the ventilation system. The ventilation system is really unlikely, we have not seen it as a problem worldwide, but we are not leaving unturned stone. “

Yesterday, 157 Pullman Hotel employees had been screened, along with 192 guests currently on the premises. Of those, 30 still have test results to come and all the others have tested negative.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday that Medsafe approval of the Pfizer vaccine could happen next week and frontline border workers will be the first to receive it.