Pacific churchgoers in self-isolation after positive case attends service
A case of COVID-19 has been found in the community that's not linked to the Auckland cluster and health officials are desperately trying to ring fence it.
The Covid case in question is a man who works as a maintenance worker at the Rydges Hotel managed isolation facility in Auckland who does not have any routine contact with guests. His partial genome sequencing results indicate his case is not linked to the community cluster.
The person returned a positive result for COVID-19 on Sunday 16 August with symptom onset on 11 August. He was transferred to Jet Park Hotel quarantine facility on Monday 17 August. It has taken till this morning for genomic sequencing results to confirm the origin of the case.
Genome sequencing shows a returnee from the USA with the same sequence as the maintenance worker was at the Rydges Hotel from 28 July to 31 July before they returned a Day 3 positive test and were immediately moved to the Jet Park quarantine facility on 31 July.
At this stage there is no obvious person-to-person connection between the worker and the returnee from the USA but investigations continue.
Initial reviews of CCTV footage and swipe card movements so far show no interaction between the two people including no entry to physical locations occupied by the returnee from the USA.
The room the USA returnee was in has been unoccupied since the case was transferred to the Jet Park quarantine facility and is still empty. The room underwent hospital-grade cleaning with hydrogen peroxide vapour sanitation using a BioQuell machine.
Contact tracing and testing has not connected any further cases to the maintenance worker, and to date this remains a single case.
Six close contacts he worked with at the managed isolation facility have been identified and are in self-isolation. They have all returned negative results from surveillance testing last week, however as a precaution all staff and returnees at the Rydges are being retested again via an onsite testing team. Forty-five staff members and 54 guests were tested yesterday, the remainder will be tested today.
Three household close contacts of the man are all in self-isolation and have been tested.
Interviews with the man have revealed that he attended two of the Emmanuel Cook Islands Good News Fellowship church services on the morning and evening of 9 August. Health officials have contact traced all attendees as close contacts. As of last night, all but nine of them had been tested with the remainder being tested today. All are in self-isolation.
The venue of the service is a school hall and deep cleaning of the facility is currently underway.