Moving Auckland to Alert Level 3 and the rest of the country to Alert Level 2 was the right decision “for the time being”, according to a Covid-19 data modeller and Government adviser.
University of Auckland Professor Shaun Hendy told Breakfast today that while there was a possible border link, as one woman of the three community cases worked at an airport laundry and catering facility, this wasn’t yet confirmed.
“It would be one of the more unusual sources of infection if that was the case,” he said, with the woman mainly handling laundry and preparing meals.
Hendy said while Covid-19 could live on surfaces, perhaps on a discarded pillow or mask used by a returnee that the woman may have handled, person-to-person contact was more likely.
“What we’re really worried about is that we’re looking at the tip of the iceberg of a bigger cluster here in Auckland.”
Genomic sequencing would give more clues as to whether the woman’s work was the route of infection, Hendy said.
“If it is one of these new strains, and that’s quite possible, then it could be spreading more quickly. It does mean that the type of decision that we made yesterday [to raise the Alert Level] is the right decision,” Hendy said.
After Hendy's interview, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the new infections were the highly-transmissible UK variant.
He said the decision to keep New Plymouth at Alert Level 2, where the family had visited over Waitangi weekend, was appropriate because it was easier to detect “downstream” cases through testing and contact tracing.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Health confirmed the latest community cases include a mother, father and daughter from the same household in Papatoetoe, South Auckland.
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