Sir Tim Shadbolt says Bluff wedding Covid-19 stats were 'slightly misleading'

April 6, 2020

The Invercargill Mayor says it’s a bit unfair to call it a Bluff cluster when guests were from out of town.

Invercargill Mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt says the statistics given by the Ministry of Health relating to a cluster of Covid-19 cases from a wedding in Bluff are "slightly misleading".

A total of 55 of the 70 guests at a wedding at the Oyster Cove restaurant contracted the virus, including the bride and groom.

The wedding took place before large gatherings were banned, and bride and groom told 1 NEWS there were no guests who had travelled from overseas.

The bride and groom are among those sick after the 70-person wedding.

Speaking this morning to TVNZ 1's Breakfast, Sir Tim said the stats had worried a lot of people in Bluff, but the reality was that there were not any locals at the wedding.

"It's slightly misleading looking at those figures - the Southland District Health Board covers a huge area - it's all of Otago and all of Southland," Mr Shadbolt said.

"None of the people that were there were in fact from Bluff - so to call it the Bluff wedding is stretching the poetic license a little bit."

He said it was a pity that the home of the Bluff oyster was being maligned in that way, and that locals had been concerned.

"They've been portrayed as the epicentre of this terrible disease."

Despite the news, morale in Southland was good, Mr Shadbolt said, and he himself is trying to stick to schedules, including taking his son Declan out for scooter rides.

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