Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Northland towns waiting for Bay of Islands locations of interest stuck in 'limbo'

Two Northland towns are stuck in "limbo" as they wait more than a week to learn the locations a confirmed Covid case visited.

Other parts of the mystery surrounding the Covid case's movements include hours unaccounted for and the whereabouts of her female travel companion, who police have spoken to but not yet located.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said moving Northland back into alert level 3 on Friday was the "right thing to do" due to a lack of co-operation by the women to provide details about their journey.

On Saturday, October 2, the Auckland woman – first reported as an essential worker - allegedly used false documents to enter Northland.

It's unknown what time she crossed the border, and the Ministry of Health (MoH) is yet to respond to the Advocate's request for this information.

However, her trail begins later that same day at the Comfort Hotel Flames on Waverley St in Onerahi which she first visited around 6pm.

Unfortunately, the hotel's manager was unable to be contacted by the Advocate.

The woman was recorded to have visited the Comfort Hotel Flames Whangārei, in Onerahi, on October 2 through to October 3. Photo / Rachel Ward

Five and a half hours pass until the woman springs up at the second location of interest - nearly 8km away at BP Connect Wylies, on Maunu Rd in Woodhill, at 11.20pm.

The service station – which has since undergone a deep clean - was listed as a location of interest for 40 minutes, stretching into the early hours of Sunday morning on October 3.

At around 12.20am, the woman's journey leads back to the Onerahi hotel where she stayed until 9am when she left to visit Pepe's Dairy – 100m away.

Pepe's Dairy, in blue, has a bustling location at the Onerahi shopping complex. Photo / Rachel Ward

She was listed as having potentially been at the dairy for up to an hour.

The dairy's owners said they found out they were a location of interest a day too late to be able to check their CCTV footage before it was wiped.

It wasn't until 10.30am on Saturday – six days after the fact – that they received a call from the ministry informing them of the "sad news".

"It's very late to find out but it's not the Government's fault – it's the ladies who won't co-operate," one of the owners said.

They were grateful Sunday mornings were usually a quiet time when only "a few" people would pop in to buy the paper.

The owner, working the day the woman visited, waited four hours to get tested on Saturday and was now self-isolating - hoping for a negative result.

Both were fully vaccinated and neither had shown any symptoms. He said they strictly followed health regulations in the shop.

According to listed locations of interest, the woman's trail returns to the Comfort Hotel Flames until 6.30pm on October 3, when she crops up 38km away at the popular Uretiti Beach DoC campsite in Waipū, south of Whangārei.

The woman and her companion reportedly stayed at the Department of Conservation campground at Uretiti Beach, Bream Bay, from October 3 to October 5. Photo / NZME

A Uretiti Beach Campsite manager told the New Zealand Herald it was believed the Covid-positive case had been accompanied by another woman.

Stuff reported campsite manager Adrien Chevrier was told by Northland DHB it was a "possibility" those who visited the campsite with Covid may have been sex workers.

A claim that has been meshed with gang affiliations, that both Hipkins and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said lacked any confirming evidence.

Northland DHB responded to the Advocate's query about whether they had information the Government didn't by stating: "Northland DHB, Ministry of Health and Auckland Public Health Service (ARPHS) proactively share information about individual cases in the Northern Region to ensure an informed and integrated response to Covid-19."

Whangārei local Colin Thew was one of around 40 people at the campground on Friday evening when a manager told them it was a location of interest.

Initially, they were locked down but then anyone who arrived after October 5 – such as Thew and 25 others – were allowed to leave.

"It was such a shock," he said. "I wasn't expecting what he told us."

Thew was already "angry" about the women's actions when it dawned on him he now had to treat "everybody like they had Covid".

Z Kensington station, on the corner of Kamo Rd and Nixon St in Whangarei, is one of five listed locations of interest in Northland. Photo / Imran Ali

The woman's three-day stay at Uretiti was broken up by a visit to Z Kensington service station in Whangārei on Monday, October 4, from 3.45 to 4.45pm.

And at some point that same day she also received a Covid test at a Whangārei community testing centre, with the exact time and location not made public by the ministry.

At 5pm the next day, the woman's journey stops dead in terms of locations of interest despite Hipkins labelling Paihia and Kawakawa as locations of interest and saying the woman was in Northland until the evening of October 6.

The Covid case was now in a quarantine facility in Auckland and had been since Thursday evening.

Bay of Islands-Whangaroa Community Board chairwoman Belinda Ward said a feeling of "frustration" had started to seep through the Paihia and Kawakawa communities.

"It's been a week since those women were up here and here we are in stuck in limbo. It's really concerning because of our lower vaccination rates."

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She said the "bush telegraph" was ahead of the news as people turned to social media to find the facts.

The only new information revealed by the Ministry of Health on Sunday related to Northland was that authorities had made contact with the Covid case's travel companion.

The Advocate understands the woman was successfully contacted by police, who were "all" – including Northland officers - working to pinpoint her whereabouts which were still unknown.

The news came as Northland remained off the MoH's list of new community cases reported on Sunday, with all 60 cases linked to Auckland (56), Waikato (3) and the Bay of Plenty (1).