Covid 19 coronavirus: two men hospitalized from the Sofrana Surville

Two crew members aboard a container ship anchored off Queensland’s Sunshine Coast were evacuated to a mainland hospital after being diagnosed with a strain of Covid-19 that had not yet been seen in Australia.

New Zealand health authorities say a kiwi engineer is likely to contract the virus after working on the same ship last week and testing positive on Saturday.

“The positive test results of the crew members aboard the Sofrana Surville support the hypothesis that the dock worker reported by the Health Ministry on Sunday could have been infected while working on board,” the ministry said in a statement.

The hospitalized sailors will be recorded as two new cases in the state’s virus count because they are now at Sunshine Coast University Hospital.

A third member of the crew had previously recovered from the virus.

All 19 crew members aboard the Sofrana Surville were tested off the coast of Mooloolaba on Wednesday after they were prevented from docking in Brisbane.

The Kiwi engineer was originally reported to have tested positive for a strain of the virus that had not been seen before in New Zealand or Australia.

New Zealand has asked Queensland to conduct genomic sequencing tests to determine whether the cases were related to the case of a new strain.

“That may take up to a week, but we will do the work requested by the New Zealand government,” said Health Minister Steven Miles.

“An engineer who worked on this vessel and another tested positive … it’s a strain they haven’t seen in New Zealand before,” Queensland Maritime Safety General Manager Angus Mitchell told ABC radio on Wednesday.

“They’re still trying to figure out where he got it from, but either of the two international visiting ships is an obvious place.”

Meanwhile, the owner of a popular local pub in New Zealand’s latest Covid-19 hotspot was forced to lock the doors for 14 days after an infected customer spent more than three hours there on Friday night.

Kevin McVicar, who runs The Malt in the North Shore suburb of Greenhithe, has been informed by the Health Ministry that his staff have to self-isolate for 14 days from the infected client’s visit.

Health chief Ashley Bloomfield said the man was unlikely to have been contagious when he was at the bar between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., as he had only been exposed to the virus that morning.

Health officials are investigating whether the man who visited The Malt was infected while in the same office as the first case in the group, the marine electronics engineer.

– Additional reports, NZ Herald