An analysis of locations of interest may show the first few days of community transmission happening under Kiwis’ noses
As authorities zero in on the source of the current outbreak, the Crowne Plaza keeps coming up over and over again.
Refuting claims of leaky walkways around the MIQ facility has become a mantra for Dr Ashley Bloomfield in daily stand-ups for the press.
Since New Zealand was plunged into lockdown last week, the exact source of this round of contagion remains a mystery.
But plotting the early locations of interest, published by the Ministry of Health in the first few days of lockdown, suggests the central city as a likely point of origin.
The list of these locations nears 500, with a large number of them located in downtown Auckland - a handful in the direct proximity of the Crowne Plaza.
Locations revealed so far in central Auckland centred on the Crowne Plaza:
More than 20 locations of interest are within 300m of the Crowne Plaza. Four of these are right on Elliott Street, which runs directly alongside the hotel and facility.
Despite this, authorities remain hesitant to name the Crowne Plaza as the most likely point of Delta’s entry.
“At this point we still do not know what happened at the Crowne Plaza, or whether it was even at the Crowne Plaza that there was transmission from our potential source case,” said Minister for Covid Response Chris Hipkins, speaking on Wednesday afternoon.
He noted the facility had been audited four times over the last year. “No concerns were raised by people with expertise in this area,” he said.
Nevertheless, this week work was done on a perspex wall on the perimeter of the facility to ensure it reached the ceiling, suggesting the wall may not have been fit-for-purpose previously.
In Wednesday’s select committee on the Covid-19 response, Joint Head of MIQ Brigadier Rose King said the boundaries of the Crowne Plaza met all quarantine requirements - namely, outside fencing has two layers, with at least one of these layers covered in mesh or perspex.
National’s Covid response spokesperson Chris Bishop questioned whether these requirements, established in the course of setting up the MIQ system last year, were enough to stop the newly-arrived and highly infectious Delta variant.
“Guidance for the exercise facilities last year may not be relevant for today,” he said.
But while investigation is still underway into how the virus may have escaped the Crowne Plaza, locations of interest in the central city paint the picture of how the outbreak first began to spread.
A cluster of locations are flagged around lunchtime on Tuesday August 10, showing the movements of at least one infected person.
They visited St Pierre’s Sushi on Elliott Street - within the view of the Crowne Plaza - for an hour and 45 minutes. The next location is The Warehouse, located just across the street, where an infected person popped in for less than a quarter of an hour.
This may have been to grab some economical snacks to sneak into the cinema, as Event Cinemas on Queen Street - some hundred metres away - was marked as a location of interest from 1.30pm to 4.30pm.
Meanwhile, an infected person visited McDonald’s and Gongcha Bubble Tea on Queen Street.
We cannot tell how many infected people were at play from the list of locations other than to say there were at least two. However, the relatively high number of locations in close proximity all around the same time suggests they crossed paths.
This cluster of locations by proximity and time comes the day after the first case from New South Wales being transferred from the Crowne Plaza to the Jet Park quarantine facility.
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said a whole lot of things would have had to have gone wrong for the virus to escape the Crowne Plaza, but said there were elements pointing towards it. “It’s moved up the list of a few other possibilities,” he said.
He estimated the virus would have left the facility between August 7 and 10.
“You have to be exposed and then incubate for a day or two before you can spread it,” he said, meaning further community transmission would have begun from around the 10th onwards.
This lines up with the Tuesday lunchtime cluster of locations
There has been recorded transmission at just 13 of the 480-plus list of locations, although the Government is keeping these locations close to its chest.
“It is our intent to share those,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “But we want to do a bit of analysis as to whether or not [the infected cases] were known contacts to one another - because some of the locations might be quite large and we don’t want to trigger everyone to act in a particular way just because they were in those locations.”
Professor Rod Jackson, an epidemiologist from the University of Auckland, is skeptical we will ever find out exactly where this outbreak began.
“My guess is we’ll never find out for sure,” he said, pointing to the mysterious genesis of the Valentine’s Day cluster, which was traced to the family of a refrigerated storage facility worker before the trail ran cold.
“It may have just been somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Jackson. “There are always going to be these one in a thousand sort of incidents.”
He said the way to manage this risk is by getting vaccination rates as high as possible.
The Ministry of Health asks people who were at a location of interest at the specified time to self-isolate and call Healthline on 0800 358 5453 for advice on testing.
