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Brendan Copeland admits for a moment to thinking “Ashley, who?” in March 2020.
Copeland had been summoned to the secretary’s tent midway through the 2020 New Zealand Bagpipe Band Championship in Invercargill.
He was the key organizer and a guy named Ashley Bloomfield wanted to chat.
“I thought he must be linked to one of the teams,” Copeland recalls 12 months later.
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In fact, Bloomfield was in Invercargill watching his son compete in the tube band championships, held on Friday and Saturday.
Copeland recalls reaching out for a handshake, only for Bloomfield to say that he would rather not.
It was day two of the championships, the enormity of the Covid-19 situation, at that point, had started to sink in Bloomfield.
Ross giblin
The Director General of Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, was in Invercargill 12 months ago when the severity of the Covid-19 situation became a reality.
Bloomfield introduced himself as the CEO of Health. He told Copeland that the organizing team for the bagpipe band championship was doing a good job, but asked that the teams be separated a bit more. He also asked that the handshake be discouraged at the awards show later that day.
The New Zealand Tube Banding Championships had drawn more than 1,500 competitors to Invercargill, some coming from Australia, while others from the United States, where Covid-19 had already started to spread rapidly.
Copeland now knows that the event had all the ingredients to be a Covid-19 super spreader.
John Hawkins / Stuff
City of Invercargill Highland Pipe Band President Brendan Copeland was a key organizer for the Invercargill National Pipe Band Championships last year, which was seen as one of the last massive gatherings before the restrictions went into effect. of Covid-19.
Bloomfield had made a late decision to head south and ended up staying in backpacker accommodation.
He said it was in the Invercargill backpackers that he flipped through a report that explained exactly what was unfolding.
“I read a pivotal article about what was happening with the virus around the world,” Bloomfield told Stuff.
“I can remember walking around the room feeling quite agitated. I just had the feeling that we had to act fast. “
The next day, the government announced that anyone entering the country would have to isolate themselves for 14 days.
Robyn Edie / Stuff
The Waimatuku Southern Scenic Highland Pipe Band competes in the 2020 Royal New Zealand Pipe Bands. National Association Championships in Invercargill.
To this day, Copeland says that he and his fellow organizers often talk about how lucky they were to prevent New Zealand’s largest Covid group tag from being attached to their event.
It was that conversation with Bloomfield during the tube band championships that Copeland realized what was at stake.
“He told me that [the pipe band championships] it would probably be the last mass gathering in New Zealand. That was probably the middle of Saturday and I was like, ‘wow, this is pretty big,’ ”Copeland said.
He points to the Hereford World Conference, which was held in Queenstown the week before and turned out to be one of the largest groups.
“It could have been us, we were very lucky,” Copeland said.
Robert Kitchin / Stuff
Chief Health Officer Ashley Bloomfield gives the media an update on Covid at a press conference at Beehive in Wellington.
On March 21, seven days after Bloomfield’s conversation with Copeland, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a new Covid-19 alert level system for the country.
New Zealand was placed at alert level 2, which included reducing gatherings to less than 100 people.
It was five days before New Zealand went to alert level 4, limiting New Zealanders to their homes in addition to essential needs.
In the space of 11 days, Bloomfield had gone from nervously watching hundreds of people exhale with their bagpipes in Invercargill to advising the government that everyone should be locked up to help “flatten the curve.”
“A year later, the main thing I feel is a sense of gratitude and pride for the way New Zealanders as a country responded to Covid-19,” said Bloomfield.
“There are so many parts of the country that participated in the response and, if possible, I would thank all of them individually. We have collectively done well. “
Now the cover has been put on Covid-19 in New Zealand, despite the strange outbreak to remind the country of the deceptive nature of the virus.
Next week, New Zealand bagpipe band enthusiasts will gather in Napier for the 2021 national championships, which Bloomfield has confirmed he is eagerly preparing to attend.
However, don’t expect any “Ashley who?” This time I was wondering if Dr. Bloomfield asks for a talk, given that he quickly became the face of the Covid-19 fight in New Zealand.
