Photo: Director-general of Health Ashley Bloomfield
New Zealand has reported its first coronavirus case outside of a quarantine facility in more than two months, although there is no immediate evidence the virus is spreading in the community.
Director-general of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the infected woman was a 56-year-old who recently returned from Europe and had quarantined at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel.
Like other returning travellers, she had spent 14 days in quarantine and twice tested negative before she returned home on January 13.
She later developed symptoms and tested positive.
“We are working under the assumptions that this is a positive case and that it is a more transmissible variant, either the one identified first in South Africa or the UK, or potentially Brazil — or another transmissible variant,” Dr Bloomfield told a news conference.
The woman had travelled to Spain and the Netherlands before arriving in New Zealand, he said.
Mr Bloomfield said authorities were investigating whether she caught the disease from another returning traveller who was staying in the same quarantine facility.
“This woman concerned has been scrupulous and keeping a good record of her movements, scanning the QR codes everywhere she’s gone,” Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister, said.
“That’s laid a very good foundation for our contact tracing team to do what they need to do now and that work is well underway, so I want to acknowledge that.”
Concern over community spread as pressure grows on Ardern to vaccinate
Mr Bloomfield said officials were ramping up contact tracing and testing efforts and hoped to have more information about the case in the coming days.
New Zealand last recorded a community coronavirus transmission on November 18, according to the Health Ministry website.
A tough lockdown and geographical isolation helped New Zealand virtually eliminate the novel coronavirus within its borders.
The country of 5 million people has had only 1,927 confirmed cases.
But with the pandemic raging globally, more people are returning to New Zealand with infections, including the new variants, raising concerns the virus may spread in the community again.
Pressure has been mounting on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Government to vaccinate the population, but New Zealand has said the majority of its population will only be vaccinated in the second half of the year.