A returnee who stayed at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel has raised concerns about guests mingling during their isolation stay.
The managed isolation hotel is now linked to three community cases who tested positive after leaving the facility.
It’s still under investigation how the three community cases managed to become infected, but preliminary genomic sequencing results has linked the cases together.
All three have the South African variant.
The latest cases are a child and adult who live on Auckland's North Shore.
Karen Lynn completed her stay at the Pullman Hotel in September and spoke to Breakfast this morning about her concern for how returnees were managed at the facility.
“Overall the hotel was great, the staff were great, but there were a couple of flaws in the system that we spotted,” Lynn says.
She says they noticed when they were given the all clear for Covid-19 on day 12 they were able to freely move around the hotel.
“There were no restrictions on us mixing with the new arrivals.”
Lynn raised this concern with Ministry of Health officials, who told her the mingling of guests was “fine”.
“They weren’t too concerned about it, which we thought was odd.”
The main points of contact with other guests takes place on the ground floor in the lobby, the smoking area and the excercise area.
However, Lynn says she felt safe in these areas with staff monitoring how close guests were to each other and if they were correctly wearing masks.
It was the lifts that caused most concern for her.
“There were only three lifts that serviced 14 floors. So all of the guests had to use the lifts to access the excercise area and the smoking area.
“So on a daily basis everyone was using those lifts. And there was nobody monitoring those lifts.”
She says despite signs telling people to hand sanatise when using the lifts and to only enter with their own bubble, people ignored this.
“We thought if we were going to catch [Covid-19] anywhere that would be the place we’d catch it.”
Lynn says after staying in MIQ she’s not surprised that cases are coming out of the facilities.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, the Minister for Covid-19 Response Chris Hipkins says there's never zero risk when it comes to Covid-19, but he believes the facilities have done well.
“Our managed isolation facilities have been incredibly successful. When you think that this is a very virulent virus — we’ve had over 100,000 people who have come back through these facilities and at most we’re talking about a handful of issues that we’ve had to deal with.
“So they have been incredibly successful.”
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