Five hundred more Defence Force staff are being deployed to managed isolation facilities and the Government is also directly hiring security guards to help control the centres. It comes as officials report six new cases of Covid-19 today, one of which is in managed isolation.
A National government would require all overseas arrivals and all high-risk border-facing workers to carry a Covid card - or similar technology - to enhance contact-tracing.
The idea has previously been floated by Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker as a way to get a head start on contact-tracing inthe event of a future outbreak.
National Party leader Judith Collins will be releasing the border policy today, and yesterday declined to confirm any details.
But the Herald understands it includes a proposal to require higher-risk people - including higher-risk, frontline border workers and all travellers coming to New Zealand - to use Covid cards or similar contact-tracing technology.
Additionally all border-facing workers would be required to keep a diary - digital or manual - of where they've been in the short-term, and to carry a Covid card in the long-term.
And National wants to commit to rolling out a Bluetooth contact-tracing app - such as the Covid Card - for the whole country.
Today's policy from National follows Ardern's announcement yesterday of 500 more Defence Force personnel to beef up the testing of border-facing workers.
She has been under pressure for telling the country that those workers were being regularly tested.
But the testing was actually voluntary, and before the current outbreak about two-thirds of workers at managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities hadn't been tested at all.
Professor Baker backed a trial of the Covid card for overseas travellers and frontline border-facing workers.
"You could have a Covid card issued to all the people in MIQ facilities and all the staff. If you had any concern about a breach from any of these facilities, you could look at the records to see who had contact with who.
"That's going to give you a big head-start. Such information could help in both preventing outbreaks and in better managing them if they occur."
The Government was going to trial the Covid card in Rotorua, but that has been put aside while the Government responds to the current outbreak.
The Covid card uses Bluetooth to detect close contacts for 21 days. No contact data is automatically stored in the cloud or elsewhere and it does not track user location as the card does not have GPS capability.
A health professional would download the data - which would show other Covid card carriers who had been in close proximity - if a person was infected.
Such devices Bluetooth devices need to have 80 per cent take-up to be effective.
Morgan, who last week condemned a government trial of the Covid Card in Rotorua as a "political sop" has moved on to promoting a txt-based plan.
