Man who spent time in managed isolation says 'I could've jumped the fence'

A security guard sits outside the Novotel Hotel in Ellerslie, Auckland, where there are people recently returned from overseas in managed isolation. Photo / Peter Meecham.

A man claims he could have escaped managed isolation without anyone noticing.

The man, who wishes to be unidentified, told Newstalk ZB's Chris Lynch: "I could've jumped the fence if I wanted to get out of there and no one would know, you wouldn't know I was gone for days."

Three people have escaped managed isolation since Saturday.

The Distinction Hotel in Hamilton where a man in his 50s escaped managed isolation on Thursday. Photo / file

A woman jumped two fences at the Pullman Hotel on Saturday, and a Covid-infected man escaped managed isolation at Auckland's Stamford Plaza to visit a nearby Countdown. The third escapee was a man in his 50s, who escape managed isolation at a Hamilton facility on Thursday night, making a trip to a liquor store.

The caller to Lynch's show said he could have escaped the isolation facility by climbing a fence near the room his family was staying in.

The family of four arrived from Melbourne and were put up at a hotel in South Auckland before travelling to the Christchurch after the required two weeks of isolation.

The man said he was told the previous week residents were allowed to walk freely around the block by themselves until someone "hopped in a car and [went] off for a coffee and they got caught and ruined it for everyone".

The man told Lynch he saw people lining up for coffee and saw germs being spread: "I was watching people cough and put their hand on a counter, no one wiped it up, someone else put their hand on that."

The man said on his 10th day of managed isolation he was offered a "voluntary Covid-19 test".

Telling Newstalk ZB he couldn't believe it, "I said 'what happens if I don't do it?'. They said 'nothing'. I said 'will I still be let out?' [they said] 'yup, absolutely'."

The man said his family would stay in their room, and would go outside for half an hour exercise during the "quietest time" of the day.

"People in NZ do not understand the devastation that this [Covid-19] causes, we see it on the news but we are isolated we don't actually see the daily reality of what this means."

When driving back to Christchurch he said "It was like the weight of the world came off my shoulders and you breathe the air".