Despite health officials narrowing their search down to passersby in one central Auckland thoroughfare for now, the location still hosts a vaccination centre
Since the first case of community transmission in four months surfaced last week, public health officials and contact tracers have had a mystery to solve.
While the immediate order of business was predictable enough - locking down the country - preventing future outbreaks may rely on putting a finger on where Delta came from.
Genomic sequencing by the Ministry of Health over the first few days of the outbreak was luckily able to narrow the virus’s origin to New South Wales, and identified a MIQ facility in a hotel in downtown Auckland as the most likely location to have leaked.
The Crowne Plaza has been identified as the place where Delta most likely entered the community.
But while officials know an infected person entered the facility on August 7 before being transferred to the Jet Park Isolation Facility and then on to Middlemore Hospital, exactly how Delta hit the streets remains a puzzle.
Police are still on the hunt for two passersby spotted on CCTV who used a thoroughfare running adjacent to the entrance to the MIQ facility as the infected person was being admitted.
Four other pedestrians have already been identified, contacted and tested, with three having returned a negative test and one in process.
However, a vaccination station remains in use within spitting distance of the very spot officials are investigating as the gap in the wall of Fortress New Zealand.
On Monday afternoon, the vaccination station was seeing robust trade, with a line of people snaking up the linoleum towards the entrance of the Crowne Plaza.
According to Healthpoint, the Elliot Rooms vaccination station is open daily from 7am to 7pm, and is the only one operating in the CBD.
While public health officials are yet to confirm whether the walkway is the source of transmission, University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said a number of elements point towards it.
“It’s moved up the list of a few other possibilities,” he said.
Although the walkway and the facility are separated by a floor-to-ceiling perspex wall, there are windows to allow package delivery.
Baker said with the more infectious Delta, these may have been enough.
“Anywhere the air can go, the virus can go,” he said. “As we saw at the Jet Park Hotel, an aerosol can waft and the virus can linger for some time.”
Delta transmission occurred within the Jet Park isolation facility last week when doors to rooms on opposite sides of the corridor were opened at the same time for meal deliveries and health checks.
The doors were simultaneously opened for three to five seconds on a handful of occasions - enough for Delta to make it across the corridor.
Initially, Newsroom raised questions about a walkway outside the Crowne Plaza atrium, which ran directly alongside the facility’s exercise yard.
However, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed today that the infected person did not access the exercise yard, as they had not provided a negative test and received the blue band allowing them the right to access the facility’s fresh air zones.
“The individual did not access the exercise yard,” Ardern said. “This leaves in play the question of the atrium, which is separated and well-ventilated.”
Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield didn't confirm the walkway as the site of the outbreak, but at the same time, wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re keeping open the lines of investigation at this point of time,” said Ardern. “[The facility] does still have barriers and ventilation. Having said that, we’ve got to explore everything.”
Bloomfield said the Crowne Plaza is still housing recent returnees, but has stopped taking new ones for the time being.
He said if an issue is found with this specific facility’s defences, New Zealanders can expect the solution to be brought to MIQ sites around the country.
“Every time we get an issue in one MIQ facility, rest assured that we then look across the whole system,” he said.
University of Otago epidemiologist Nick Wilson said hotels were never designed for quarantine purposes, so failures like this may be par for the course.
He suggested the New Zealand Government should consider dedicated facilities to replace them.“New Zealand should seriously look at following what is used in Northern Territory - the Howard Springs facility, with separate one-storey units,” he said. “The cost of building these dedicated facilities is relatively small compared to the cost of lockdowns.”
He also said these facilities would have value into the future, if New Zealand ever needs to close its border for public health reasons again.
“They would have good legacy value for future pandemics,” he said. “Pandemics that could be far more severe given developments with biotechnology.”
