Corona Kiwi Style - Update
Oct. 7th, 2020 12:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msconductTomorrow night Auckland joins the rest of New Zealand in Level 1, meaning life as normal except for worrying about the carnage overseas. The "second wave" (ripple?) cluster of disease that got into the community has been mopped up, at the cost of three more deaths (taking our total deaths to 25) and now the only coronavirus left is in MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine).
Every go-around we learn something new and useful about the virus. So what were the takeaways this time?
Last time I posted about this, I mentioned that casual contacts don't seem to be a factor in transmission, and our latest outbreak bears that out. The cluster started in a workplace and spread to workmates, household members, close social contacts and church congregation members. It very much looks as if you have to spend a reasonable amount of time in the vicinity of an infected person to get infected yourself, so the people you pass in the street and supermarket are pretty low risk.
On the other hand, transmission via an infected surface, while not wildly common, is still definitely a thing. I posted last time about the virus being passed on via a lift button in the quarantine hotel. Since then, a case made international headlines when a man who'd come in over the border went through his 14 day quarantine with clear tests, then developed the virus at around the 21 day mark, having in the interim infected others on a charter flight from the Christchurch quarantine hotel to Auckland. While our frighteningly efficient track and trace system stopped the spread very quickly, the event caused alarm and panic: should we have been quarantining arrivals for three weeks all along? However, when the mini-outbreak was sequenced within an inch of its life, it turned out that the man had picked up the virus in the quarantine hotel from the lid of a communal rubbish bin. Also, although the source of our second outbreak can't be absolutely pinpointed, through elimination via genetic sequencing it's a pretty good assumption that it came from the surface of a contaminated cold storage container that had been imported from the US. So keep washing your hands.
Another thing our second outbreak has taught us is that Covid-19 is not the only thing that can spread and cause people to get infected. This cluster was the largest we've ever had - more than 180 people - and part of the reason for that is that one large segment of the cluster came from the congregation of a Seventh Day Adventist church. The church was sceptical about the existence of coronavirus and also felt that even if it did exist God was the only one who could do anything about it. As a result, when a congregation member became infected the congregation initially ignored government instructions to social distance and the virus spread far more than it needed to. These beliefs aren't home-grown: the church had links with the US evangelical movement and the misinformation about Covid came directly from there via social media. Given how strictly New Zealand's approach to Covid has been science-led, having our virus elimination efforts hampered by imported misinformation has been disappointing to say the least. As the 1,500-strong protest at the terrible tyranny of Auckland's two and a half week lockdown (not to mention the moron holding up a Q sign) shows, you can stop the virus at the border, but stupidity is a great deal harder to block.
The rest of the country's been enjoying pubs and restaurants without social distancing, concerts, and sport in packed stadiums for weeks now, and us Aucklanders will be happy, grateful and deeply relieved to join them. I'll continue using the Covid tracer app, because it helps us pin down any future outbreaks super-quick and avoid more lockdowns. However, with zero virus in the community I will be hurling my box of masks with great force into the back corner of the cupboard and hoping they can stay there.
Every go-around we learn something new and useful about the virus. So what were the takeaways this time?
Last time I posted about this, I mentioned that casual contacts don't seem to be a factor in transmission, and our latest outbreak bears that out. The cluster started in a workplace and spread to workmates, household members, close social contacts and church congregation members. It very much looks as if you have to spend a reasonable amount of time in the vicinity of an infected person to get infected yourself, so the people you pass in the street and supermarket are pretty low risk.
On the other hand, transmission via an infected surface, while not wildly common, is still definitely a thing. I posted last time about the virus being passed on via a lift button in the quarantine hotel. Since then, a case made international headlines when a man who'd come in over the border went through his 14 day quarantine with clear tests, then developed the virus at around the 21 day mark, having in the interim infected others on a charter flight from the Christchurch quarantine hotel to Auckland. While our frighteningly efficient track and trace system stopped the spread very quickly, the event caused alarm and panic: should we have been quarantining arrivals for three weeks all along? However, when the mini-outbreak was sequenced within an inch of its life, it turned out that the man had picked up the virus in the quarantine hotel from the lid of a communal rubbish bin. Also, although the source of our second outbreak can't be absolutely pinpointed, through elimination via genetic sequencing it's a pretty good assumption that it came from the surface of a contaminated cold storage container that had been imported from the US. So keep washing your hands.
Another thing our second outbreak has taught us is that Covid-19 is not the only thing that can spread and cause people to get infected. This cluster was the largest we've ever had - more than 180 people - and part of the reason for that is that one large segment of the cluster came from the congregation of a Seventh Day Adventist church. The church was sceptical about the existence of coronavirus and also felt that even if it did exist God was the only one who could do anything about it. As a result, when a congregation member became infected the congregation initially ignored government instructions to social distance and the virus spread far more than it needed to. These beliefs aren't home-grown: the church had links with the US evangelical movement and the misinformation about Covid came directly from there via social media. Given how strictly New Zealand's approach to Covid has been science-led, having our virus elimination efforts hampered by imported misinformation has been disappointing to say the least. As the 1,500-strong protest at the terrible tyranny of Auckland's two and a half week lockdown (not to mention the moron holding up a Q sign) shows, you can stop the virus at the border, but stupidity is a great deal harder to block.
The rest of the country's been enjoying pubs and restaurants without social distancing, concerts, and sport in packed stadiums for weeks now, and us Aucklanders will be happy, grateful and deeply relieved to join them. I'll continue using the Covid tracer app, because it helps us pin down any future outbreaks super-quick and avoid more lockdowns. However, with zero virus in the community I will be hurling my box of masks with great force into the back corner of the cupboard and hoping they can stay there.
