9 new Covid-19 cases - 5 in the community, all linked

9 new Covid-19 cases - 5 in the community, including 3 cases linked to the Mt Roskill church cluster and 2 household contacts

31st Aug 20, 1:12pm by Jenée Tibshraeny

Image sourced from Pixabay

There are nine new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand - five in the community and four imported from overseas and caught in managed isolation.

All of the community cases are epidemiologically linked. Three are linked to the Mt Roskill church cluster and two are household contacts of existing cases.

The church cluster is linked to the Auckland cluster via genome sequencing. It is yet to be epidemiologically linked. Health Minister Chris Hipkins said there are potential links and authorities are following leads.

There are 131 active cases in the country. 107 of these are in the community.

Yesterday, 7219 tests were processed.

28 close contacts of the Tokoroa health professional, found to have Covid-19 over the weekend, have been identified. 16 of these contacts have been contacted.

As of August 11, 2621 close contacts of infected people have been found. 2505 have been contacted.

There are 11 people in hospital, including two in ICU.

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15 Comments

by realterms | 31st Aug 20, 2:18pm 1598840288

Isolated household contacts. So far, so good.

by Squishy | 31st Aug 20, 2:28pm 1598840901

My thoughts exactly, while you can link the cases you have some semblance of understanding.

by Foyle | 31st Aug 20, 4:51pm 1598849481

Yes hopefully contained now, though I suspect the church cluster will grow substantially as they were reportedly running clandestine prayer meetings after lockdown.

by Squishy | 31st Aug 20, 2:47pm 1598842047

Any update on locating the Index Case? It is actually critical that we understand the conduit to prevent transmission in future. Having a new outbreak at 2 to 3 month intervals is going to be a pain and really economically disruptive.

by realterms | 31st Aug 20, 2:53pm 1598842437

Not that I've heard. I'd say the trail is pretty cold now.

Seems quite likely to me that it slipped through MIQ. Yes they can't match the sequence to any of those cases, but they only have sequences for 60% of the MIQ cases. (And that's discounting the period of zero known cases where the testing wasn't actually happening.)

by WestieAJ | 31st Aug 20, 3:18pm 1598843937

The failure to ensure that EVERY one of the roughly 100 positive cases from MIQ was genome sequenced during the 100 COVID Free days. Will, after all of the dust settles be seen as the single biggest failure of the MOH in recent times. If it is anything like 40 out of 100 not sequenced. It is just not good enough. The Prime Minister said on morning report this morning that if we could have identified the source of the outbreak sooner we could have avoided level 3. Hundreds of millions of GDP could have been saved. As of now we still don't know and probably never will.

by Foyle | 31st Aug 20, 4:52pm 1598849536

There have been substantial holes all over the processes that are now (seemingly/hopefully) being tightened up. I'm still concerned about the apparent lack of quarantine for flight crews (which seems hopelessly negligent at this stage), and also seems pretty clear that we need to build a substantial dedicated quarantine facility in an isolated locale away from people in major cities so they can't be accidentally exposed forcing crippling lockdowns. I'd suggest a trailer park arrangement with units that can be mass produced and relocated to holiday/tourist destinations or poor communities when crisis is over.

by sharetrader | 31st Aug 20, 6:27pm 1598855237

it looks like we will have to learn to live with this disease for a very long time, if that is so then yes we need to plan and build to dedicated quarantine facilities, one in the north island, one in the south island, and to me they need to be built next to armed force bases away from auckland

by James Thrace | 31st Aug 20, 3:45pm 1598845512

It could easily have been passed around from one of the 1500 that left MiQ in June without having had any tests.

Given how hard it was to get a test when NZ moved to Level 1, it's entirely theoretical that in the 6 weeks between the 1500 being released and the first case getting sick on July 31, people did get sick but passed it off as a "winter cold" because NZ had been told the virus was eliminated.

It just so happened that in that 6 week period, nobody got sick enough to present to hospital. Not everyone gets that sick if they do get infected. Some people get mild symptoms. A small percentage get extremely sick. It is not outside the realms of things that are possible that one of the 1500 who left MiQ early were asymptomatic infectious and passed it on. It's certainly a more plausible scenario than having it come in on a shipping container. Lets not forget that MoH could not find about 200 people of those that were released early. And this is before we start talking about those who were released on "compassionate" grounds and didn't have a test before being released.

by Foyle | 31st Aug 20, 4:49pm 1598849353

The first new cluster case was off sick 31st July at Americold. Infected 1-2weeks earlier, and picked it up from someone who was themselves likely infected 1-2 weeks earlier. What you suggest isn't impossible, but seems likely there would have to have been multiple cycles of infection - which would have most likely spread a lot further.

by sharetrader | 31st Aug 20, 6:34pm 1598855684

very unlikely, but since it started in a logistics store in south auckland it all points to coming over the border somehow, i think it most likely did not come out of a MQIS facility but more likely across the airport or port itself, they tested everyone at both ports so that seems unlikley, but there are still a bunch of airport workers that have never been tested so that seems most likely only the ones that come into direct contact with passengers have and will be tested, and as we have seen by the maintenance man catching it the support staff that go aboard to clean the planes the guys that replace the food the guys that unload the bags from the plane all have a small chance of catching it

by Lanthanide | 31st Aug 20, 7:53pm 1598860404

1. The genomic sequencing of the current strain shows it is similar to overseas strains, if it had been here since June it would have mutated more.
2. We've had about 130ish cases in the current cluster, with ~11 in hospital. If it had been here since June, we would've seen cases in hospital before now.
3. Almost all of those people who left isolation without having any tests were subsequently tested and found to be negative.

It seems like we caught this fairly early on in the transmission chain. The Americold worker probably picked up it from someone who left isolation in mid to late July.

by GV 27 | 1st Sep 20, 7:46am 1598903185

Lathnaide, you keep posting this without recognising that it's the asymptomatic spread that lets this thing get a foothold before authorities can respond or trace it. I've yet to hear anyone rule it out as being circulating in June, the only thing that they've been clear on is that it wasn't part of the original transmission we locked down into Level 4 to stop. If you have a link you can point me to that suggests otherwise, I'd be keen to see it.

by kiwichas | 1st Sep 20, 8:50am 1598907059

Absolutely right JT; remember it was impossible to get tested in Auckland for quite a while as the DHBs considered testing unnecessary at that time .
Of course when we start testing again several are picked up at the border per day, so for a month we were liberating the bug daily into the community, not at all surprising it has popped up a month or so down the track.

by WestieAJ | 1st Sep 20, 11:03am 1598915032

On 8th June New Zealand announced to the world we were COVID Free. That included all arrivals in MIQ as well. There had been approx 3500 border arrivals in the previous 14 days. But none of them had COVID apparently. Mandatory testing in MIQ was supposed to come into force June 9th. But did not actually get implemented until June 16th. So we had an extra week for the world to be informed of our COVID free glory. Low and behold once we did start testing we have averaged 1 case per day in MIQ ever since.