Two more people have tested positive for Covid-19 and there are now 10 active cases in the country. Both of the two new cases are in managed isolation facilities, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says.
A grieving American woman who was allowed to attend her father's wake just a day after arriving in Auckland was not tested before being granted a compassionate exemption, the Herald can reveal.
The case comes as the Government still can't say today how many people were allowed out of quarantine - without being tested - before the rules were tightened last week. Government minister Megan Woods told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that was a number that health chief Ashley Bloomfield was working on.
The US woman, who the Herald has agreed not to name, said she had now tested negative for the virus and posed no risk to anyone as she mourned her dead parent.
The Herald revealed last week that people who attended the commemoration were shocked to learn the woman had only just arrived in the country from a coronavirus hotspot and feared they might have been exposed to the deadly virus.
In a statement, the woman said she applied for the exemption on June 8, as New Zealand's alert level lowered to 1.
She followed all of the protocols at the time and was granted leave to attend her father's wake under old rules - which allowed people who had not shown symptoms to attend a loved one's funeral.
Arriving in Auckland on Saturday June 13 from a small town in the United States where she had been in isolation for nearly three months, she went into managed isolation.
Her application for compassionate leave to attend the wake was granted the same day.
The next day, Sunday June 14, she left managed isolation for 2.5 hours to farewell her father at commemoration of life in Greenhithe.
Four days earlier, the Ministry of Health had banned anyone in quarantine or managed isolation from attending a funeral or tangi.
People could still get compassionate leave to attend a small gathering, but only after seven days in isolation and after a negative test.
The woman's father was cremated during lockdown because it was not possible to have a funeral, and the Sunday wake was a "celebration of his life", a person who attended said.
The daughter said she followed the Ministry of Health's instructions at the funeral, wearing a mask and gloves and standing more than five metres away from other people attending.
The 40 people at the wake were told she would attend and were warned that "if they felt uncomfortable, they should have made a personal decision to not attend the gathering that celebrated the life of her father," she said.
Though she confirmed she was not tested before being released from managed isolation to attend the wake, she said she tested negative for Covid-19 a few days later.
Suffering the debilitating grief of losing her father suddenly, organising travel during a pandemic and then going through the complicated process of applying for an exemption, the woman said she was assured she did everything the Ministry of Heath required.
They tested positive only after arriving in Wellington.
The Herald put repeated questions to the Ministry of Health about whether the US woman had been tested for Covid before being allowed out to attend her father's wake.
It did not respond, other than saying people who applied for a compassionate exemption before the rules tightened on June 9 could still be granted approval, even if their application was processed after that date.
The ministry said the exemptions were granted in "extremely limited circumstances", and only to people who had provided medical evidence and detailed travel and isolation plans.
Under normal circumstances, such people would also be tested before leaving isolation, the ministry said.
This does not appear to have happened in the US woman's case.
Megan Woods told Mike Hosking that the case happened last week, and highlighted "well-traversed" issues that she was brought in to fix.
"I can give assurances that no one is [now] leaving a managed isolation facility without having a test."
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Last week, Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield last week reiterated that going forward, all people would be tested before they left quarantine or isolation facilities.
This policy was meant to be in place already, but a growing number of cases around the country showed that it had not always been followed by health officials.
Woods Hosking this morning that she did not know how many people had been let out of quarantine without being tested, before the tightening of rules last week.
"Dr Ashley Bloomfield is being asked around that, and that will continue to be the case.
"I am focusing on making sure we have robust procedures at our managed isolation and quarantine facilities. That we have testing in place to ensure nobody leaves without having a test."
Woods confirmed the Government was looking at ways to charge people for the cost of isolation and quarantine - it was an "eye-wateringly complex" operation to run.
It was difficult to administer - people would likely need to be means-tested, and income details and tax details would need to be gathered. "We are working at pace but carefully."
