Northland Moving To Level 3 After ‘Uncooperative’ Whangārei Covid Case
Covid-19
Another part of the country will head into lockdown as Covid-19 spreads around the country, the Government has confirmed
Northland will move to Level 3 from 11.59 pm tonight due to concerns about a woman who travelled to Whangārei earlier in the week after allegedly falsely identifying themselves as an essential worker, and is now refusing to cooperate with health officials.
Revealing the decision, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said information provided by police showed the case had “moved extensively around Northland” after travelling there on October 2, with the Ministry of Health confirming on Thursday she was a positive case after an earlier “weak positive” in Whangārei.
Over four days the woman visited Whangārei, Kamo, Paihia and Kawakawa. They had not been easy to locate after the early test result, had not been cooperative, and it was suspected they might have been travelling with others.
“We believe this new information warrants an alert level change decision to keep Northland people safe.”
Hipkins said it was his understanding, although not yet formally verified, the woman had obtained an essential worker document by providing false information – something which was not picked up until after she had travelled across the Auckland border.
He confirmed the Government would look at the system for providing essential workers with travel documentation and whether anything needed to be changed as a result of this case.
“One of the big challenges around the border, having internal land-based borders, is that you have to have a process that’s reasonably efficient in terms of processing requests, but also reasonably thorough. Those two things can create some tensions between trying to give people speedy answers to their applications, particularly when the travel may be time sensitive for example, but also making sure that it’s thorough.”
A number of gang members and affiliates have been connected to the current Delta outbreak, and Hipkins said the Government had long been concerned about the virus finding its way “into the harder to reach parts of our population”, making it harder to carry out case investigation and contact tracing.
Hipkins said he did not know the woman’s occupation, or whether she had any gang affiliations, but said any possible criminal activity would not be passed onto law enforcement if provided to health officials to help track her movements.
“Our public health officials, when they’re interviewing people as part of contact tracing, do not use that information for any other purpose other than eliminating the risk of Covid-19, they don’t share that information with the police for the purposes of criminal investigation.”
However, the Government has previously resisted calls by academics and lawyers to pass a law which would prohibit the sharing of contact tracing data with police and law enforcement, and some have argued police could forcefully obtain such information through a warrant or production order.
A number of gang members and affiliates have been connected to the current Delta outbreak, and Hipkins said the Government had long been concerned about the virus finding its way “into the harder to reach parts of our population”, making it harder to carry out case investigation and contact tracing.
“We’re seeing really good cooperation across a large number of those people though, so I don’t want to stereotype everyone that’s involved here, but there are examples where it has been much more difficult and this is probably the starkest of those, where we have someone who has clearly had quite a lot of movement and hasn’t been willing to share the details of that
While it was unusual to put a region into Level 3 without further cases, it was important to get ahead of any potential spread while setting up widespread testing and continuing contact tracing.
Hipkins said the restrictions would remain in place until 11.59pm Tuesday, and would be discussed by Cabinet on Monday.
A stark vaccine disparity
Every Northlander needed to stay home and get tested as soon as possible if they had Covid symptoms, and check the Ministry of Health’s website for updated locations of interest.
“We know many people in Northland live rurally, but the advice is the same for everyone – get vaccinated, get tested, and follow the Alert Level 3 requirements,” Hipkins said.
“As we have seen in Waikato the virus is finding its way into rural areas and finding unvaccinated people. Distance is no barrier.”
The “strict Level 3” would not include the easing steps announced for Auckland earlier in the week, while the boundary between Auckland and Northland would remain in place.
Northland has one of the lowest vaccination rates of any DHB in the country, with just 67.8 percent of residents having had at least one shot of the Covid-19 vaccine.
There is a particularly strong disparity in vaccination rates between the region’s Pākehā and Māori residents, a topic of growing concern around the country and the subject of a legal challenge by the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency against the Ministry of Health.
Hipkins acknowledged Northland’s vaccination rate was a factor in the decision to move to Level 3, given the elevated risk if there was community spread, and defended the decision not to move to Level 4 given the lack of clarity about the woman’s travels.
“Level 3 is still quite a high threshold, quite a high response given that we don’t at this point have other positive cases: one of the reasons that we’re moving to Level 3 is if further positive cases come to light in the next 24 to 48 to 72 hours, even to move at that point means we’ve lost valuable time, and so we’re doing this now so that we don’t find ourselves in that situation.”
