As investigations into how a Northland woman contracted Covid-19 while in managed isolation, Dr Ashley Bloomfield says there’s a possibility “we may never know” for sure how it happened.
Speaking on Breakfast, the Director-General of Health said health authorities were still looking at a “range of options” as to how it happened. Possibilities included transmission through the air or through a surface.
“Direct droplet spread seems unlikely because they didn’t have any contact,” Bloomfield said.
“We may never know. In some of these cases, we do a really thorough investigation … sometimes we just don’t find out."
Experts say it could have been spread through the hotel’s ventilation system, but the Government is playing down the theory.
In that case, the Ministry of Health would consider all of those ways of transmission as a possibility then, if needed, make improvements in all of those areas, Bloomfield said.
But, he said they were confident it came from a fellow returnee at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland, where the woman completed 14 days of isolation. The woman contracted the more-infectious South African variant of Covid-19.
As for how the Ministry of Health was managing new variants of the virus, Bloomfield said it was important to note they had now spread widely and were found globally.
This meant risk needed to be assessed country by country, based on the number of infections it recorded, he said.
The Director-General of Health says vaccinations should begin by March.
Bloomfield said the Ministry of Health was looking “very carefully” at making sure people at different stages of their managed isolation wouldn’t be able to mix.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Health said 16 people in total now have been identified as potential close contacts of the woman. Fifteen have returned negative tests, and one close contact is awaiting test results.
Bloomfield said he hadn’t yet received the test result for the remaining case because they were only identified as a close contact after a further interview and only got a test yesterday.
All of the close contacts remained in isolation, meaning they would be re-tested, he said.
He said it was “very encouraging” to see the results of 15 close contacts had come back negative.
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