New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern scolded offenders for the recent cluster of coronavirus cases, leading to further restrictions for Auckland.
The city was again blocked with level three restrictions for at least a week from Sunday, after the discovery of a community case of unknown origin.
Health officials who investigated over the weekend successfully established that the person, known as Case M, had been infected through contact with a family included in the recent Papatoetoe cluster.
The meeting took place during the three-day instant block in Auckland last month, and was not disclosed to the trackers who interviewed the family (Cases D through H) before being quarantined.
At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Ardern said that breaking the rules was unacceptable and that those who did were “facing the full judgment of the entire nation”.
Ardern said the government’s response to Covid was multifaceted, but it still depended on everyone’s participation, not only to comply with the rules, but also to ensure that others did the same.
“Even with a complete understanding of human fallibility, it is not appropriate and it is not certain that the five million team members will disappoint the rest of us …
“That’s why I’m asking everyone, now more than ever, to continue to support and support each other, and if that means calling a family member or coworker for not following the rules, then we should do this. “
Case M, a 21-year-old college student, is the older brother of a Papatoetoe high school student, who is at the center of the February outbreak.
Case M had previously returned three negative test results, but has been considered potentially infectious since Sunday, during which time they visited several public places.
Their mother, Case N, also tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of active cases in the community to 11.
The Auckland blockade is expected to last seven full days with the decision to extend, or decrease, alert levels to be made as authorities’ investigations into places of interest continue this week. Nearly 200 Case M contacts have been identified on the Manukau campus of the Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) and City Fitness, which are being contacted by public health teams.
Under level three restrictions, everyone in Auckland must stay home. The rest of the country is operating at level two.
In the meantime, the Ardern government is under pressure on how to respond to those who are undermining New Zealand’s Covid response.
The National opposition party is pushing for greater enforcement of self-isolation and fines directives for those who have broken the rules, with Covid-19 spokesman Chris Bishop arguing that Nova’s “high confidence model” Zealand was starting to collapse.
“People did not feel the pressure to follow the rules because there are no sanctions … We said on February 17 that it was a big decision to take Auckland from level three and go down to level two.”
On Monday morning, Ardern told Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report that it was “obviously very frustrating” that the rules had been broken and the information withheld, but that the decision to prosecute or not to prosecute would rest with the police.
The priority was to contain this cluster, she said. “Everyone is angry. I absolutely accept that people want to see the repercussions. At the same time, how to make sure people tell us the truth – because there is nothing more valuable to us than knowing, in these scenarios, where the contact took place. “
She resisted the suggestion that government processes were inadequate or that it was premature to end last month’s block after three days. “We were at the right level at the right time – we just needed people to follow the rules.”
Others called for a punitive approach, given the potential to fragment the commitment to the blockade.
Siouxsie Wiles, a microbiologist at the University of Auckland, told Radio New Zealand that it is important that people feel comfortable talking about contact with confirmed cases.
“The last thing we want to do is create an environment where those who broke the rules do not come forward to test or mislead contact trackers about where they have been or who they have been with.
“We really need people to cooperate to overcome this.”
But Manukau ward counselor Fa’anana Efeso Collins told Stuff that the burden of responding to New Zealand’s coronavirus was now being borne by communities in southern Auckland, without adequate involvement or support.
“I can see that we are slowly moving into the post-kindness phase, where instead of being a team of 5 million, we hear that people just need to be compatible,” he said.