Ryan Bridge spoke on The AM Show about his theory on Covid-19 cases not linked to an existing cluster. Photo / Three
Ryan Bridge spoke on The AM Show about his theory on Covid-19 cases not linked to an existing cluster. Photo / Three
Ryan Bridge has speculated about where he thinks mystery Covid-19 cases are coming from.
The presenter, who recently took over as host of The AM Show from Duncan Garner, spoke with his fellow hosts Amanda Gillies and Mark Richardson about the outbreak.
"I wanted to mention something to you aboutthe mystery cases," he explained.
"You would have heard this yesterday, right, where they said so many cases aren't linked to an existing cluster and everyone says 'oh watch out for the mystery cases because we don't know where they've come from'.
"And they said yesterday - I think there were 24 of these so-called mystery cases. Where have these people been infected that we don't know about? Even more strange, because we're in a lockdown, you'd think the number of places that you'd go, you can count on one hand right?"
And Bridge had a theory of why the cases were indeed a "mystery".
"Well I just wonder, if these people - aren't having affairs," he said.
"Or," he offered. "Maybe [they're] visiting some sort of sex worker," he suggested.
"Because if there's something you wouldn't tell a contact tracer, or a nurse, or a health professional it's that you're sleeping with someone else's wife, isn't it?"
He said he wasn't saying that's necessarily the explanation, but asked his viewers if they had accounted for that. Richardson agreed with Bridge's theory, suggesting confirmed cases may be reluctant to tell contact tracers about their whereabouts if they wanted to keep them under wraps.
Gillies tried to get the show back on track after the conversation and joked it was hard to get a serious point in about nurses being overworked after a previous interview with Kerri Nuku, the kaiwhakahaere for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.
"It now just feels null and void when we go into affairs and sex workers," she said.
