Covid 19 coronavirus: Americold ruled out as source of community cluster

It is highly unlikely Americold's Mt Wellington coolstore is the source of the Auckland August community cluster, the director general of health says.

A theory last week suggested freight from an Americold facility in Melbourne caused the cluster, which is now linked to 98 people, all of whom have been moved into quarantine.

Americold NZ managing director Richard Winnall told the Weekend Herald he could "completely rule out" any suggestion his facilities were the source.

This afternoon, Dr Ashley Bloomfield reiterated Winnall's comments, saying the likelihood of anyone being infected from Americold's surfaces was essentially ruled out.

Surface testing of the Mt Wellington facility is yet to be completed.

The first case of community transmission in New Zealand for more than 100 days worked at the Americold coolstore in Auckland.

Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The cluster forced health officials to plunge the city into another alert level 3 lockdown and the rest of the country to alert level 2.

Three outstanding Covid-19 tests of Americold workers recently came back negative, limiting the number of confirmed cases at the workplace to 10.

Seven of the confirmed cases are employees and three are contractors, Winnall told the Herald yesterday.

"We're expecting no further test results at this site, so we believe that's the full extent we'll hear from that site," he said.

Meanwhile, genome testing from two other Auckland cases has found one is not linked to the existing community cluster.

The man, a maintenance worker at the managed isolation facility at the Rydges Hotel, returned a positive result for Covid-19 on Sunday, August 16.

Contact tracing and testing have not connected any further cases to the man.

The maintenance worker was transferred to the Jet Park Hotel quarantine facility yesterday.

This morning genomic sequencing results revealed a returnee from the US with the same sequence as the maintenance worker stayed at the hotel from July 28 to July 31 before returning a positive test on day three.

The traveller was moved immediately to the Jet Park quarantine facility on July 31, the Ministry of Health reported.

The Americold facility in Mt Wellington. Photo / Greg Bowker

There is no obvious person-to-person connection between the worker and the returnee, investigations are ongoing.

"Initial reviews of CCTV footage and swipe card movements so far show no interaction between the two people including no entry to physical locations occupied by the returnee from the USA," the ministry said.

"The room the USA returnee was in has been unoccupied since the case was transferred to the Jet Park is still empty."

Another result today has confirmed a separate case of Covid-19 is connected to the Auckland August cluster.