Coronavirus Covid 19: Another Pullman Covid case? Woman says infected daughter in Auckland hotel

Two sisters arrived from South Africa earlier this month healthy and Covid-19 free.

But one would be a victim of the infection, and now her mother believes her youngest daughter, just 15 years old, contracted the virus while they were in controlled isolation at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel.

Candice Botha told Stuff that her two daughters, ages 15 and 20, flew in from South Africa and arrived in Auckland on Saturday, January 9, and put them on a bus to the Pullman.

The hotel is now known to be the location where the last three confirmed community cases also remained in managed isolation.

Botha said it was on that bus trip that the alarm bells started ringing, when the girls saw that they had been put together with people wearing purple bracelets; indicates people from high-risk Covid countries such as the UK and the US.

The oldest of the girls told Stuff that she and her sister were silent during their hotel stay, especially after seeing foreign arrivals mingling in the hallway, despite arriving on different flights.

There was little social distancing at the hotel as people were playing basketball and children were running, Stuff reported.

The sisters tested negative for Covid on their test on the 12th on January 20.

But the next day, two days before the couple came out of administered isolation, the 15-year-old fell ill, Stuff reported.

The family said the teenager had trouble breathing and, a day later, tested positive for Covid-19.

Passengers of different flights mixed and mixed

Her mother said her two daughters were annoying about being clean as they had been living in South Africa during the global pandemic, so they must have contracted the virus at the Pullman due to a lack of social distancing.

He also believes his daughters were left in a room alongside the last two confirmed cases in the community, since they identified themselves as a man and his young son, in the North Shore.

“These facilities are there for a reason: you are there to isolate yourself. You are supposed to isolate yourself from people,” he told Stuff.

Pullman Hotel no longer accepts returnees

Yesterday, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced that no more returnees would be staying at the Pullman Auckland hotel.

The hotel would eventually be emptied and effectively suspended as a managed isolation facility, as a deep clean would take place.

The sisters are now in the Jet Park quarantine facility in South Auckland and the youngest of the couple is said to be recovering well.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she wanted advice from health officials on additional measures for travelers after completing controlled isolation amid a new Covid-19 outbreak detected in an adult and a child.

Ardern said “something had happened,” causing the virus to spread among guests in the isolation facilities of the Pullman Hotel. As a result, no new returnees entered the Pullman while the situation was investigated.

When asked if new rules could be put in place to prevent returnees from leaving their rooms at MIQ facilities, Ardern said there are protocols for people who are getting fresh air.

“If they need to be more strict because of what we find in this, we will,” he said.

Officials were analyzing whether guests should stay in their rooms at the end of their stay while waiting for test results, as they do at the beginning of their stay.

“We have allowed people to breathe fresh air [because] they are in small confined spaces, we are aware of the fact that the vast majority of people do not have Covid in these facilities and only allow people to spend their two weeks, but in the safest way possible, that is the balancing act. ” he said Thursday.

Ardern said he trusted New Zealand’s systems and said Australia’s decision to suspend free quarantine travel was up to its officials.

When asked about more safeguards at MIQ facilities, Ardern said the new cases were still linked to the border.

New rules have come into effect since the new positive tests and would make a difference, he said.

“It is clear from the link to these cases that something had happened,” he said.

More research was being done to understand how the infection had occurred at the Pullman Hotel.

“We have had tens of thousands of people who have moved successfully, but we are looking for more guarantees,” Ardern said.

When asked how the infection happened, he said nothing was ruled out and that it could be a surface-to-surface transfer, an air transfer, or people just crossing each other.

“The people who work in managed isolation facilities are heroes,” the prime minister said when asked if the staff at those centers need to get back on their feet.

When asked if there was too much contact at the Pullman hotel among returnees, Ardern said officials were being rigorous in figuring out what had happened.

“They keep them in their rooms while we work on this problem,” he said.

No new returnees entered the Pullman Hotel while the situation was investigated.