Issues and Organising

Friday's an early flight to Wellington for the delayed PPTA Issues and Organising Conference. It's good to see everyone and even better to have a day off school. The weekend is busy with meetings, speakers and socialising. I present on Saturday and Sunday on the part time issue, along with the five women who testified in the court case. It lasted four years, the union put $1.5 million into fighting it and we lost. The premise was that, because most part time teachers are women, it is a gender equity issue. Now we have to go back to putting pay equity into our contract round. Over the weekend I eat with these women and join their quiz team. They're tight. And they've got spirit, but it was sorely tested by this fight. And the disappointment of losing. But none of us are giving up. Equity is non-negotiable.

I drive to the Town Hall on Sunday night to hear how 700 musicians combine- school kids and a handful of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. It's a big sound and the timing's not bad. 

My plum tree is flowering, it must be spring. The days are lenghtening enough that I can come home and do some work in the garden before dark. And there's a lot to do. On Tuesday afternoon we get news there is Covid Delta in the community in Auckland. On the 6pm news Jacinda and Ashley announce we're going into Level 4 lockdown. Just like that. We're what happens when you delay, Sydney, and we haven't got widespread enough vaccination to wait. So I go to bed reassured that this issue will give me enough time to organise my garden. Not saying I'm happy about the break, but it's come at a good time.

PM: Good evening, everyone. As we advised earlier this afternoon, we have a positive case of COVID-19 in the community. We will not be in a position to identify if this is a case of the Delta variant of COVID-19 until genome sequencing is returned tomorrow. However, every case we have had in MIQ recently has been the Delta variant of COVID, and Delta is surging around the world. While we cannot confirm it yet, we need to assume that our case will be too, and that has shaped all of the decisions we have made this afternoon. Public health officials have been working at pace this afternoon to gather information on the case and their movements, and I will pass to Dr Bloomfield shortly to set out the facts as we currently know them, including locations of interest that have been identified so far.

But first I want to assure New Zealand that we have planned for this eventuality and that we will now be putting in place that plan to contain and stamp out COVID-19 once again. Going hard and early has worked for us before. While we know that Delta is a more dangerous enemy to combat, the same actions that overcame the virus last year can be applied to beat it again. I’ll now pass to Dr Bloomfield.

Dr Ashley Bloomfield: Thank you, Prime Minister. Kia ora koutou katoa. So just to update you on the details around the community case that we announced this afternoon, to recap: just after midday, I was alerted to a positive COVID-19 test result in Auckland. This case was identified when the person presented to their GP yesterday — Monday — with symptoms and was tested. So to start with, I want to thank both the person who has tested positive and, of course, the general practice. We can only act on cases if we know they are there as soon as possible. The case is a 58-year-old male from a household in Devonport on the North Shore of Auckland. He became symptomatic on Saturday, 14 August, so the infectious period is considered to have started on Thursday, 12 August. Importantly, and this has been fundamental to our advice to the Government, at this point there is no obvious link between this case and the border.

Whole genome sequencing is being rapidly carried out at ESR’s Auckland laboratory for this case, and we expect to have the results through in the early hours of tomorrow morning. The whole genome sequencing will help us learn about this infection and whether or not it is confirmed to be one of the Delta variants we have seen overseas, and it should also give us information about potential links to other cases. You will be aware that every case that we have in New Zealand in managed isolation—the sample goes to ESR for testing, for whole genome sequencing. That’s not always successful, but we have a database, of course, of all the previous ones that have been sequenced successfully. So it will help us with our source investigation, and in the meantime, as the Prime Minister said, we are assuming this is the Delta variant, as all of the genomes sequenced over the last at least three weeks, and, in fact, all but one since late June, have been Delta variant.

The person lives with his wife, who was also tested yesterday and yesterday returned a negative test. Both individuals have been self-isolating at home until this point. On their earlier movements, the couple travelled by private vehicle on Friday, 13 August to Coromandel township and stayed the weekend there, returning to Auckland on 15 August. The case has a small number of workplace contacts who are isolating and being tested. The man is not vaccinated but was in the process of actively booking his vaccination—had had trouble with the website but had been making efforts to do that. His wife is fully vaccinated. I do want to commend the case for being a frequent user of the New Zealand COVID Tracer app. This has helped very much in helping us speed up identifying locations of interest. We have identified, at last count, 23 locations of interest: 13 are in and around Coromandel township and 10 in Auckland.