There is one new Covid-19 case in managed isolation, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield says.
EDITORIAL
It is a fortnight since the latest community outbreak of Covid-19 began after the virus jumped ship, by infecting a 27-year-old port worker.
For a while, it did seem inevitable that the virus was once more loose in Auckland and the city was headed for imposed restrictions.
Our latestcommunity infection sprang from a 27-year-old man being exposed to the virus on October 13 while working on a ship visiting Auckland, the Sofrana Surville.
He then travelled in his own car to New Plymouth for work, keeping much to himself and wearing full personal protection equipment at work on board the ship. He travelled back to Auckland on October 14, returning to work on Friday, October 16 when he began feeling unwell. He left work and was tested for Covid-19.
While at work, he had brief contact with two other people. That night, October 16, one of them visited The Malt - a pub in Greenhithe on Auckland's North Shore.
On Saturday October 17, one of the men also visited a Snap Fitness gym between 9am and 12.30pm in Browns Bay, also on the North Shore.
By the following Thursday, Rangitoto College disclosed a family member of a confirmed case had attended school briefly earlier in the week.
In these instances, it appears we got lucky that the people had so recently been infected that they were not yet contagious.
As of Monday there were still only four positive cases linked to the "marine employee cluster" - the port worker, his two colleagues and a household contact of one of them.
Yesterday, director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced no new positive community results had been found, after extensive testing throughout Auckland and, particularly, the North Shore.
Despite widespread concerns about a poor take-up of contact tracing on the Covid QR code and a lack of masks at major events including the general election and a full Eden Park the day after to watch the All Blacks beat the Wallabies 27-7, this cluster remains confined to fewer than a handful of cases.
Bloomfield said tens of thousands of community tests had been carried out and he thanked the testing centre and laboratory staff. We should also be grateful to everyone who opted to be tested.
Reportedly, the community and businesses of Greenhithe selflessly imposed level 3 restrictions to reduce the risk of spread - stepping up mask wearing, social distancing and contact tracing.
With the incubation period for Covid-19 believed to be between two to 14 days, to pass a fortnight since an initial infection is cause for cautious optimism. Bloomfield yesterday said we're not yet at a point where we can be "fully confident" there's an outspread connected to the marine engineer cluster. All close and casual contacts of the marine engineer have tested negative.
The virus has extraordinary stealth but we know how to best halt it. For now, touch wood, our efforts once again been rewarded.
