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.
Opinion by Derek Cheng
Derek Cheng is a Multimedia Journalist for New Zealand’s Herald. He values holding those in power to account and shining a light on issues kept in the dark.
There's no indication yet of how he caught it, but workers who might come into contact with potential Covid-carrying travellers - or the surfaces they touch - are higher risk.
That is the point of mandatory and regular testing. It can detect an outbreak earlier.
No system is perfectly watertight but there are lines of defence to minimise risk.
Another line of defence is a daily health check, which should have prevented the worker from going to work with a cough for two days - Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
It was put down to a pre-existing condition, but it beggars belief that he wasn't sent home on the day that Auckland returned to alert level 3.
The Government had told us that regular testing of border-facing workers was already in place, but the Ministry of Health said it was still being delivered.
This all has a horrible sense of déjà vu.
In June, people staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities were meant to be tested on day three and on day 12 of their stay. It wasn't happening, we later learned, because the ministry was still putting it in place.
Daily health checks were also not done properly on two Covid-infected sisters, one of whom had symptoms. A thorough check might have seen their application for early leave rejected. Instead they were allowed to drive to Wellington.
In all of these cases, communities were unnecessarily put at risk.
PM Jacinda Ardern repeatedly gave the impression this was being done, including last Thursday when she said workers at the Jet Park Hotel were being tested once a week, while other workers were tested on "a slightly longer rotation".
Those comments have since been exposed as completely untrue. Before this outbreak, testing was voluntary and many border-facing workers - including about two-thirds of MIQ workers - hadn't been tested at all.
The ministry's strategy says border workers will be "strongly encouraged to seek testing if they experience symptoms".
"In addition, testing of asymptomatic people who have been potentially exposed to Covid-19 infection through their work will be available."
It's an enormous red flag if Cabinet and the ministry have completely different ideas about what is meant to be happening.
And there's a lot at stake.
The Government was gifted an abundance of good fortune in June when none of the people granted early leave infected anyone in the community.
Whether that luck has run out remains to be seen.
There is no evidence yet to link the current outbreak to the border, or a worker at the border, but that doesn't make it impossible or even unlikely - especially as infection from surfaces at Americold have now been ruled out.
If border-facing workers had been regularly tested, it may well have made a difference or even prevented the enormous price that the country, and Auckland in particular, is now paying.
Whether it would have, of course, may never be known, which gives the Government a corner to shelter in as much as it makes them a target for the suffering that people are currently enduring.
