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Chief Health Officer Dr. Ashley Bloomfield says that the rule-breaking behavior of various Pakistani cricketers in controlled isolation is unacceptable.
The cricketers were on their “final warning” after breaking the rules of administered isolation in Christchurch.
Speaking at RNZ’s Morning report, Bloomfield explained that several players were caught “mingling” in the hallways outside their rooms while in controlled isolation at the Chateau on the Park hotel in Christchurch.
The Health Ministry confirmed that six of the 53 team members had tested positive for Covid-19 after routine tests on the first day.
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Joe Johnson / Stuff
The Chateau on the Park hotel in Christchurch is currently used as a managed isolation facility.
Bloomfield said four of the positive results were new infections and two were possibly historical infections. All team members also returned negative tests before flying to New Zealand.
Bloomfield told RNZ that CCTV showed that the players had not complied with the arrangements that had been clearly established for them.
“Instead of being in their own rooms, which is a requirement for the first three days, until the first test comes back, there were some people in the hallways, chatting, sharing food and not wearing masks.”
Bloomfield said the mixing incident happened “at least once,” and that it only had to happen once for them to have “a bad view of it,” he said.
He said that mixing in controlled isolation was not something that was allowed to happen and “is not something that is at all acceptable.”
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Chief Health Officer Dr. Ashley Bloomfield says the actions that broke the rules by the visiting Pakistani cricket team were unacceptable.
Since then, the team have been ordered to stay in their rooms and have been stripped of their training privileges.
It is not yet clear if any of the six people who tested positive were involved in the hallway mixing incident. The six infected people were players rather than members of the support team, Bloomfield told RNZ.
“The fact that these infections were found when they were tested upon arrival in the country suggests that there may well be others that we discover during that third day of testing,” he said. The third day testing took place on Thursday and the results were expected to return on Friday.
He said that there was a possibility that Covid-19 had spread within the team during mixing. However, the positive cases were limited to the hotel and the ministry is confident that there is no risk to the public.
“There is no evidence of interaction with other people outside of the team,” Bloomfield said in Morning report.
Joseph Johnson / Stuff
Chateau on the Park in Christchurch is a managed isolation facility.
The next steps involved the ministry looking at the test results of the third day and reviewing CCTV. A decision on an exemption to allow players to train has yet to be made.
Bloomfield also made it clear on air that he had the power to withdraw the exemption if necessary. “I just don’t see well what we’ve already seen and we will take it very seriously,” he said.
The positive cases had been moved to separate quarantine rooms at the hotel and all players would be tested at least four times before leaving the facility.
Pakistan’s first game against the Black Caps is a T20 at Auckland’s Eden Park on December 18.
NZ Cricket said it considered public health and safety to be paramount in organizing international teams and supported the position of the Ministry of Health.
Audio is courtesy of RNZ.
Dianne Manson / Getty Images
Pakistan will play the Black Caps in a T20 on December 18.
