Covid-19: what happened in New Zealand on February 16

A decision on alert levels will be announced tomorrow, use of the Covid-19 Tracer app may be mandatory, and a bank warns another recession is coming.

Two days after the confirmation of three community cases, a South Auckland family, the Director General of Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield and the Minister of Covid-19 Response, Chris Hipkins, reported that no new cases of MIQ or the Covid-19 community today.

Auckland has been at Alert Level 3 and the rest of New Zealand at Alert Level 2 since midnight Monday morning.

With the tiers set to expire at midnight tomorrow, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Bloomfield will announce to the country at 4.30pm tomorrow if there are any changes.

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The following set of results is crucial

Bloomfield says overnight test results will be key in determining whether Auckland comes out of the lockdown.

Contact tracing has identified 109 close family contacts and more than 2,000 casual contacts or more. Dr. Bloomfield said that while the results so far were encouraging, it was too early to tell if the outbreak had been contained.

This morning she revealed that the daughter of the family was the first to report the onset of symptoms, but it was not yet clear whether she was the index case or the first.

Bloomfield told RNZ Morning report program that the authorities were very interested in the results of the Papatoetoe High School tests “to make sure that if indeed the daughter was the index case, we are identifying where she could have come from.”

Meanwhile, the union representing the girl’s mother, who is a worker at LSG Sky Chefs, said she had followed all the rules to protect herself while at work.

She is responsible for washing and ironing linens, napkins, blankets and sheets on incoming flights.

E Tū Aviation Representative Savage said LSG Sky Chefs encouraged testing and was a good example of a proactive employer.

The woman who contracted the virus was diligent in following the guidelines, Savage said.

Mandatory use of the application?

The government is considering requiring the use of the Covid-19 tracking app, in a bid to increase the number of people who scan.

There are more than 2 million people registered on the app, but in January the average number of scans per day fell to 465,000.

In this afternoon’s Covid-19 update, Hipkins said that use of the app increased significantly when there was an outbreak.

Hipkins said one of the reasons the government had been hesitant to make use of the app mandatory was the potential cost of compliance, particularly for small businesses.

Recession warning

The economy is headed for another shallow recession, according to economists at Westpac Bank.

The bank’s latest quarterly forecasts suggested that a lack of foreign visitors during the summer would cost the country up to 6 percent in gross domestic product (GDP) and cause the economy to shrink 0.7 percent in the six months to March.

Westpac Bank chief economist Dominick Stephens said the impact of Covid-19 was not over.

Meanwhile, legislation providing support to businesses in the event of a longer lockdown was urgently passed by Parliament.

Businesses will have to experience a 30 percent drop in revenue over seven days to qualify for the program.

Companies will be able to request a base rate per company of $ 1500, plus $ 400 per employee up to a total of 50 full-time employees.

Canned, postponed, or airborne events

Lenten sports, events and services are among those grappling with the latest shifts in alert levels.

One of the biggest events on the air is the Auckland Lantern Festival to be held next weekend, which typically draws nearly 200,000 people.

Canoe Racing New Zealand has postponed its national sprint championships.

The regatta was due to start on Lake Karapiro in Cambridge on Friday.

Canoe Racing NZ made the decision today as the lanes and infrastructure for the nationals were due to start setting up tomorrow morning.

The national body said it hoped to reschedule the event for the end of this year.

This year’s art deco festival in Napier, which was due to take place this week, has been canceled for the first time due to Covid-19.

Criticisms may force border workers to resign: warning

The Covid-19 response minister says public health is at risk due to attacks on border workers.

Today MPs urgently debated the latest community outbreak in Auckland and the government’s response after ACT leader David Seymour requested they do so.

Chris Hipkins said one of the biggest risks at the border was workers quitting their jobs.

He told Parliament that ongoing attacks by opposition MPs and some epidemiologists against border workers were putting public health at risk.

Pullman taking returnees again

The director of managed seclusion hotels defends the decision to reopen the Pullman for guests even though the recommended changes are not complete.

About 110 guests are back at the hotel after it emptied because three guests caught Covid-19.

Several changes have been made after the recommendations of the Ministry of Health.

But the air filtration has not yet been installed in the elevators.

Brigadier Jim Bliss, who oversees Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ), told RNZ Control program that there are other measures to reduce risk such as hallway ventilation that will now operate 24 hours a day and airflow from individual rooms that will be controlled.