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Original poster

New outbreak in New Zealand

154 replies

CKBJ · 11/08/2020 11:02

Breaking news outbreak in a retirement village in Auckland. Residents developed respiratory type illness. Auckland have gone into level 3 while the outbreak is assessed. After over 100 days of being virus free and their strict measures, what has broken down to allow this?

OP posts:
Frazzled2207 · 11/08/2020 11:06

According to the guardian it is not a retirement village although there is a concern about a retirement village in Christchurch. But a family has tested positive in Auckland after 102 days of no community transmission. Very worrying indeed.

My guess is someone came into the country from abroad and developed symptoms after the 14 day quarantine.

Ickabog · 11/08/2020 11:09

Yes it seems to be 4 cases in one family. They seem to be taking it very seriously.

FiveShelties · 11/08/2020 11:09

There are two rest homes in Christchurch which are in lockdown but Covd19 has not been confirmed there

The cases are in Auckland - nothing is known of where the infection has been contracted at the moment and Auckland will go into Lockdown Level 3 from midnight. The rest of NZ goes into Level 2 from midnight. These new lockdown levels will last for 3 days initially.

I think it was expected that sooner or later we would have more cases, it was just a question of when and where.

Original poster
CKBJ · 11/08/2020 11:17

Hoping then the retirement village is not confirmedM I must have misread the breaking news on Sky

OP posts:
FiveShelties · 11/08/2020 11:22

I think(hope) the retirement village may be seasonal flu - we are in winter here and the influenza figures have been really low - probably because of the hand washing and social isolating measures. The retirement complexes were not mentioned in our announcement tonight.

GreyGardens88 · 11/08/2020 11:24

Someone breaking quarantine. This is why NZ policy doesn't make any sense because it's impossible to stop transmission and close yourself off from the world entirely

mrbob · 11/08/2020 11:30

@GreyGardens88

Someone breaking quarantine. This is why NZ policy doesn't make any sense because it's impossible to stop transmission and close yourself off from the world entirely
And yet it has been able to avoid many many deaths and open its economy up for several months. So actually it has worked. Even if it all goes to shit now that is a few months closer to a vaccine hopefully and a few months more normality. People seem to not be able to cope with the idea that some countries are doing it better...
eaglejulesk · 11/08/2020 11:33

Someone breaking quarantine

It is not someone breaking quarantine - I think someone would have noticed.

Well said @mrbob - we always knew it would happen at some stage, and at least they have got straight onto it and are taking the appropriate measures.

Frazzled2207 · 11/08/2020 11:33

even if they have failed to completely keep it out of the country they have clearly done a great job in nearly keeping it out of the country which means that by and large the economy has been spared, and almost nobody has died. Although this is a worrying development with such small numbers you'd hope they can shut down the trail(s) of infection and stop things escalating, even if other isolated outbreaks pop up.

toria658 · 11/08/2020 11:36

My phone went off and alerted me, really glad for the national emergency alerts.

Whatever happens, NZ, I believe has done a good job and our government have made the correct decisions and swiftly. Would be interested to know if the family have received post, or items via parcel. Despite being so remote our postal system is fairly good ( I’ve sent stuff to the Uk and it has arrived in days rather than weeks).

FiveShelties · 11/08/2020 11:39

I hope it is not someone breaking quarantine. We don't only have a problem with people breaking out of quarantine but over the week-end someone was trying to break into quarantine - takes all sorts I suppose.

NZ went hard and early and closed the borders, it is disappointing that new cases have occurred but hopefully the connection will be traced and we can go back to Level 1.

itstrue · 11/08/2020 11:48

It must be because of a break in quarantine.

Gives support that you just can't keep this out and we are all going to end up in the same position.

I'm in NZ. It's so upsetting that it's happened.

psychomath · 11/08/2020 12:41

It doesn't have to be a quarantine break necessarily - could be that a tiny number of asymptomatic/very mild cases were still circulating, people weren't picking up on it (perhaps not getting tested for very mild symptoms if they thought it had been eradicated) and it's only just now coming to light.

Have they said what the purpose of the three day lockdown is? That seems too short to achieve much, so I'm wondering if they're planning to extend it.

TheDailyCarbuncle · 11/08/2020 12:51

This was entirely inevitable and I'm really surprised anyone thinks it wasn't. How on earth is it possible to completely control a virus that has very indistinct symptoms, can infect a very large number of people without making them noticeably ill, that has spread to almost the entire world in a few months? There was always going to be a point at which it popped up again and now NZ is going to be stuck in the nightmare of repeated lockdowns over and over and over until a vaccine is developed (who knows when) or they decide it's not worth it any more. If they take the second option then they'll just be at the point everyone else was at in March - their infection rate will go up, deaths will go up and then eventually it'll become endemic. It's very likely that all NZ did was to press pause temporarily.

AlecTrevelyan006 · 11/08/2020 12:57

It highlights the danger of going for an elimination strategy - it leaves very little room to manoeuvre

mrbob · 11/08/2020 13:01

@AlecTrevelyan006

It highlights the danger of going for an elimination strategy - it leaves very little room to manoeuvre
As opposed to the British technique which I hear is going swimmingly 🙄
TheDailyCarbuncle · 11/08/2020 13:07

The problem is @mrbob, that no matter what 'technique' you use, it's still a highly contagious virus that is present in almost the entire world. So unless you can have almost total control over people's movements until the virus mysteriously disappears or there's a very effective vaccine, at some point, the virus will take hold again. It's just a matter of time.

LemonTT · 11/08/2020 13:16

@AlecTrevelyan006

It highlights the danger of going for an elimination strategy - it leaves very little room to manoeuvre
I don’t know if there are dangers in an elimination strategy. But there is a cost. Repeatedly lockdowning comes with economic and social consequence. NZ didn’t escape that in its first lockdown. The question is whether it is needed.

This is an isolated country with an advanced healthcare system, a low density population, and which has very low prevalence. I don’t know why they need to lockdown again. They have had enough time to respond in a more targeted and low impact way.

NB The answer to the reasonable questions about their strategy is not to refer to the Uk’s record. Other countries with bigger challenges have avoided lockdown with good public health responses.

psychomath · 11/08/2020 13:21

They're still in a better position than us though, even if they end up with similar infection levels. We're five months closer to a vaccine, and even if that doesn't work out there are better treatment options available now than there were in March, with new ideas coming out all the time. Plus a massive first wave in March would have coincided with the start of their flu season. I don't think an elimination strategy would have worked for us as we have a completely different geography and population to NZ, but for them it clearly did work well up to now.

PicsInRed · 11/08/2020 13:22

@Frazzled2207

According to the guardian it is not a retirement village although there is a concern about a retirement village in Christchurch. But a family has tested positive in Auckland after 102 days of no community transmission. Very worrying indeed.

My guess is someone came into the country from abroad and developed symptoms after the 14 day quarantine.

The case zero is in South Auckland, where the most major NZ airport is. Auckland Airport is still transiting passengers from one country to another. It's entirely possible that's where original transmission occurred - within the Auckland Airport precinct, e.g. air conditioning.

This was particularly foreseeable when Melbourne locked down and it's clear that the govt have know this for days as the messaging suddenly changed 180°.

SengaStrawberry · 11/08/2020 13:46

I hope they find out where it comes from and get it under control.

As for the comments about NZ’s policy not working 100 days of no cases and now only 4 seems pretty good to me. Eradication is not going to be possible without a vaccine but it makes sense to do what’s necessary to keep cases low to at least allow people to live normally as much as possible in the short to medium term.

TheDailyCarbuncle · 11/08/2020 13:48

@SengaStrawberry

I hope they find out where it comes from and get it under control.

As for the comments about NZ’s policy not working 100 days of no cases and now only 4 seems pretty good to me. Eradication is not going to be possible without a vaccine but it makes sense to do what’s necessary to keep cases low to at least allow people to live normally as much as possible in the short to medium term.

In theory, yes, but in practice NZ will at some point have to reopen its borders - it can't manage indefinitely with no tourism and restricted trade.
SengaStrawberry · 11/08/2020 13:50

Well no, but no country can cope with cycles of lockdown restrictions indefinitely either

cologne4711 · 11/08/2020 14:22

As opposed to the British technique which I hear is going swimmingly

There are currently very few cases in most parts of the UK. Local outbreaks account for most of the cases.

As for the idea that it came in on a parcel, come on! Are we going to go back to people putting their post outside for a week before they open it and washing their shopping down?

It seems likely that it's something to do with the airport.

Redolent · 11/08/2020 14:34

The two week incubation / quarantine period isn’t foolproof. It catches 99% of cases so you might expect there to undetected cases eventually.

Or it could be more violations of the quarantine policy. Will be interesting to see why.

The Kiwis I know are quite optimistic and gearing down for another short sharp lockdown so that this can be contained. I sure hope so.