The Holiday Inn is planned to house both the infected and uninfected - raising questions about how this affects risk of intra-facility transmission
You'd be forgiven for experiencing a little déjà vu.
This time last year, Auckland was waiting to see if it would come down from Level 3, while the rest of the country kept things better safe than sorry at Level 2.
Things are different this time, however. Not only has the newly-emerged Delta variant picked up the pace of a growing outbreak, but the Government is approaching this round with new caution.
Unlike in previous instances of Covid in the community, infected people are being transferred to quarantine facilities instead of being trusted to self-isolate at home.
Up until now this has meant a few weeks in Jet Park. But as the numbers spike, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) have put out feelers to see where they can increase quarantine capacity for the sick.
On Friday at noon, the Novotel in Ellerslie became the newest dedicated quarantine facility, providing 243 rooms for the Delta-infected.
Another facility that has quarantine on the cards is the Holiday Inn, near Auckland Airport.
But the approach here will be slightly different. Instead of being put aside as a dedicated quarantine for the infected, this facility will play a dual role, housing recent arrivals from overseas and positive Covid cases.
“Contingency planning is also well underway to transition the Holiday Inn managed isolation facility to a dual facility which, if necessary, can make 68 of its 247 isolation rooms available for quarantine purposes,” said Joint Head of MIQ Brigadier Rose King.
Just under a third of the hotel’s rooms will be reserved for quarantine, close contacts, and symptomatic border cases would be sharing a facility with the infected - prompting concerns from members of the public that these people may be at risk.
There is now an established precedent for Delta spreading along the air and within the ventilation systems of hotels, as was seen in the Crowne Plaza recently when a recent returnee from New South Wales passed the virus to a family of three, and earlier this month when investigation found that the virus passed across a hallway in the Jet Park facility.
“What this investigation has highlighted is how easily Covid-19 can be transmitted, even in tightly controlled environments,” Ministry of Health’s Deputy Director of Public Health Dr Harriette Carr said at the time.
King said as a result of this investigation there were immediate changes at Jet Park.
However, less than a week later it was revealed that a similar situation had occurred within the Crowne Plaza.
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Nick Wilson believes hotels are fundamentally flawed as quarantine and isolation facilities.
“Their ventilation systems will probably never meet World Health Organisation guidelines for ventilation in quarantine facilities,” he said.
The WHO outlines three main criteria quarantine facilities need to cover - outdoor air provided into a space, an airflow direction from clean to less-clean zones, and the airflow improving dilution and removing pollutants from a space.
Wilson said facilities such as the Pullman, Crowne Plaza and Grand Mercure have all had system failures.
“Available evidence indicates that inadequate ventilation has likely led to a number of quarantine system failures in both Australia and New Zealand,” he said. “Although MIQ facilities in New Zealand have had various ventilation upgrades – I very much doubt that the problems will be solved given the fundamental design issues of shared space - for example, shared corridors and lifts.”
Nevertheless, if the current hotels in use as quarantine fill up, MBIE will look to a dual facility.
Wilson said it’s time for New Zealand to look in other directions for MIQ.
“New Zealand should move away from the use of hotels to purpose-built quarantine facilities,” he said, pointing out those being built in Victoria and Queensland. “Or discrete accommodation units that allow for natural ventilation and reduce or eliminate shared indoor spaces - for example, the cabins used at the Howard Spring facility outside of Darwin, Australia.”
He suggests New Zealand could even try negotiating with Australia to use Howard Springs for incoming travellers to New Zealand, since the facility is being expanded.
“Work is ongoing in this space and conversations are ongoing between the hotel general managers, our partner agencies who supply our crucial workforce and wider stakeholders as we work together to respond to this evolving situation,” said King, before thanking MBIE’s hotel partners for their “herculean” efforts in helping the country manage the current outbreak.
