Maori health nurses Hani Sipu and Evelyn Suhren at a Northland testing station yesterday. Many of the concerned arrivals had visited the same outlets as the infected woman. Photo / Tania Whyte
Maori health nurses Hani Sipu and Evelyn Suhren at a Northland testing station yesterday. Many of the concerned arrivals had visited the same outlets as the infected woman. Photo / Tania Whyte
EDTIORIAL:
Our political editor Audrey Young was quick to see the issue with the Government's attempt to control the release of information on the latest Covid invasion to rattle the country.
While alerting New Zealand at 4pm to a woman who had tested positive for the coronavirus after being outand about in "southern Northland", director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield decided to delay until about 9pm before naming all the locations in Northland visited by the woman.
These sites had been pinpointed as the woman had been a zealous user of the Covid app on her phone, just as the system has been devised to do.
But what was done with this essential information? Somehow, it was deemed more important to let the owners of the businesses know first that a Covid-positive person had been at their premises than to tell the public.
It does raise the question of whose interests are more important when highly contagious strains from Britain, Brazil and, in this case, South Africa are peppering the border.
In an ideal world, a business which has been unwittingly exposed to the virus and, by all accounts, had followed all the rules on precautions and contact tracing, should not draw public attention without first being warned by officials.
Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Minister for Covid-19 Response Chris Hipkins arriving for a 4pm press conference on January 24. Photo / Getty Images
The opprobrium, particularly in social media channels, which may ensue can be highly detrimental to a business, only trying to trade through tough times. What business would not want to be warned so that it could pre-emptively conduct deep cleaning and have reassuring words ready for staff and for customers, past, present and future?
One has to feel for the operators of the Bendon outlet which, for reasons known only to Bloomfield's team, was the sole one named in the initial announcement and bore disproportionate attention as a result.
However, the very fact that 29 locations of interest had been identified should have triggered the only reasonable response from the Ministry of Health. It is unlikely all these businesses could be found and notified on a Sunday evening, therefore the endeavour was bound to fail at least some of the businesses affected.
The sheer scale of potentially infected locations also should been a spur to officials that immediate release of all available details was essential in closing down ongoing movements. The sooner people who, on realising they had visiting these places around the same time, could hunker down and heed advice, the better the likely outcomes.
Another concern which apparently whistled over the heads of officials was releasing the list of potentially affected locations at 9pm on a Sunday night was too late for far too many people, certainly to the groups who are considered most at-risk.
As it was, the five-hour delay inevitably didn't produce the desired effect, with some businesses still not briefed before the information was made public.
One has to wonder at the wisdom of the strategy, whether this is some kind of protocol drawn up at ministry level, and what it is, exactly, that officials were trying to achieve.
