The government is not ruling out a snap lockdown in Christchurch after two cases of Covid-19 were discovered late Wednesday night.
The cases are from the same household and one of the members had recently returned to Christchurch from Auckland, the Ministry of Health confirmed.
Both members are unvaccinated and the traveller from Auckland had returned on 15 October. The traveller had returned a negative test before their flight.
The Ministry is undertaking a public health risk assessment and will provide a further update on the situation.
Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report, Hipkins said the government is not ruling out the possibility of a snap lockdown in Christchurch.
“My understanding is that they’ve been unwell for a while so they could have been symptomatic and infectious for a period of time whilst back in Christchurch and so that’s one of the things that the contact tracers will be working on as a top priority this morning – to identify exactly what the nature of the potential exposure in Christchurch is,” said Hipkins.
Hipkins said their use of the Covid-19 Tracer App was low, which could be challenging for contact tracing if they were out in the community a lot .
“If they have had a significant amount of movement within the community, and then the fact that they haven’t kept records does make that more challenging because human nature is everybody will forget things.”
The government is expected to give an update at the 1 pm briefing.
More to come…