Whether or not a public walkway at the Crowne Plaza is responsible for Delta getting into the community, the fact it even exists raises serious questions, writes political editor Jo Moir.
It’s been a month since Newsroom highlighted a public walkway right next to an exercise area at an Auckland managed isolation facility as a risk.
On Monday it was revealed it is one of two thoroughfares in the Crowne Plaza - the other is now under investigation as a possible cause for Delta’s emergence in the community.
The Crowne Plaza has become a focal point as the Government and health officials hunt for how the infection got into the community, after a Sydney returnee arrived there on a ‘red-zone flight’ on August 7.
On August 9 he was transported to Jet Park’s quarantine facility after testing positive for Covid-19.
On Thursday last week - two days after the country went into lockdown - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed he was the likely source of the infection getting into New Zealand.
A working theory is that six members of the public who were in and around the Crowne Plaza lobby accessing the thoroughfare in the atrium could have contracted the virus when the Sydney returnee was checking into the facility.
Ardern told Newsroom on Monday she was keeping open all lines of the investigation and at this point nothing had been ruled in or out.
Ardern says she’s particularly “obsessed” with source investigations. Her obsession might be better placed looking for obvious flaws in the MIQ system that might lead to an investigation in the first place.
That raises the question as to why these public walkways have been operating alongside - and in the Crowne Plaza’s case, within - the facility while health officials have been busy preparing for a potential Delta outbreak.
Ardern, Bloomfield and Covid Response Minister Chris Hipkins have spent weeks, even months, assuring the public that work was being done, and scenarios run behind the scenes, to ensure New Zealand would hold up against a Delta outbreak.
Given these thoroughfares are now the subject of a Delta source investigation, it seems entirely implausible they would have passed any test to remain open had any serious risk evaluations ever been done on the country’s MIQ facilities. Health experts are already calling it a clear breach of the border system.
Bloomfield’s account of the walkways has changed from one day to the next. On Sunday he incorrectly pointed to the walkway next to the exercise area as being at fault, and on Monday when Newsroom asked him about a nearby vaccination centre, he didn’t know it existed.
The lobby area of the MIQ hotel has a lift, which the public uses to head up to the vaccination centre.
Ardern says she’s particularly “obsessed” with source investigations.
Her obsession might be better placed looking for obvious flaws in the MIQ system that might lead to an investigation in the first place.
There are still two members of the public who the police and the public health unit are trying to track down, from the six who were seen near the Crowne Plaza lobby on August 7.
The Sydney returnee has been linked to the outbreak for five days, yet the walkway hasn’t been listed as a location of interest and the public haven’t been proactively provided the relevant timings to help track the two outstanding walkway users down.
Bloomfield and Ardern were unable to answer Newsroom’s questions about how many other public thoroughfares might be operating in MIQ facilities across the country.
Those at the Crowne Plaza remained in use on Monday despite the country being in Level 4 lockdown and the hotel being the likely source of outbreak.
Both walkways share the same airspace at points as the returnees arriving at or exercising at the facility.
Bloomfield told Newsroom there would be a review of all facilities, like when issues with ventilation were identified at the Pullman Hotel, triggering a nationwide check on all MIQs.
It’s now clear Delta can spread at pace. As Otago University epidemiologist Michael Baker put it: “Anywhere the air can go, the virus can go.”
On Sunday, Hipkins said the new variant raised some “big questions that we’re going to have to grapple with, you know less than a 24-hour period for someone getting it and passing it on to others … that’s like nothing we’ve dealt with in this pandemic so far, and it does change everything”.
Any shared airspaces are far more likely to spread infection with the arrival of the Delta variant.
If those preparing for its landing didn’t take this seriously before, now seems like a very good time to start.
