Talk about pent up spend/demand. The roads around Auckland were crazy today as we came out of level 3 into level 2. It was like 2 days before Xmas!

"People who were at the Auckland Airport Countdown on Wednesday between 12.07pm and 1.22pm are not being asked to isolate."

Flight attendant, oh,

Anyway hope everyone does not pile in on them they don't decide their working conditions..

February 28th. Last time they flew and tested.  

The extra Level 3 might have just saved us , how lucky is that ?

We should be considering if flight attendants should be immediately vaccinated as equal or more risk than boarder workers ?

On plus side exposure is limited. 

Life is a work in progress. 

Batman: New case. Flight attendant.

Frankly I am really surprised it has taken this long for a case of covid-19 to end up in the community via the NZ based air crew isolation exemption.

Hopefully we get lucky, the air crew member hasn't spread it.

ezbee:

 

...

 

We should be considering if flight attendants should be immediately vaccinated as equal or more risk than boarder workers ?

 

...

 

Airline staff are considered border workers, and and "border workers" as a whole are the highest priory to get the vaccine. Their Household contacts are also considered the next tier of priority. After that, Non-border frountline healthcare workers.

https://covid19.govt.nz/health-and-wellbeing/covid-19-vaccines/getting-a-covid-19-vaccine/

We have something like 200,000 doses in the freezers at the moment, more than enough for 2 doses to all border workers and their household contacts. Only thing to do now is to ramp up the rate of vaccination to get 100% coverage to border workers ASAP... Probably need to set cut off date's too, Say be the end of 21st of march all border workers not having received one vaccine dose need to be moved away from front line duties. And by the end of april, the same deal for workers who have not received the full coarse.

ezbee:

 

We should be considering if flight attendants should be immediately vaccinated as equal or more risk than boarder workers ?

 

Air NZ have been vaccinating crew for the past 10 days or so. I've got a number of friends who work for Air NZ and know 4 of them who have already been vaccinated.

What this does show is how important surveillance testing is, and why we should have saliva testing as a key part of that surveillance testing Literally every expert is recommending it, and yet the Govt are still showing little interest in it. They have at least nnounced late last week that they were engaging a private company to do some saliva testing of border workers.

Jase2985:

 

"People who were at the Auckland Airport Countdown on Wednesday between 12.07pm and 1.22pm are not being asked to isolate."

 

 

 

Anybody who was at the store during that time is currently a casual contact, but could be upgraded to a casual plus contact when genetic sequencing comes back if the case turns out to be B1.1.7 or B.1.351 strain.

In line with MoH guidelines there is no requirement for casual contacts to self isolate.

It's scenarios like this that simply create confusion - right now there is no requirement for these casual contacts to be isolated or tested, but if later on today or tomorrow when the sequencing comes back it could end up that anybody who was a casual contact will be upgraded to a casual plus contact if it is a more infectious strain, meaning you will then need to self isolate and be tested.

Oblivian: Turns out from a PM chat that she's had the first shot.

Of course once again the 'experts' using another media release as opportunity to flip back onto defensive from supportive mode saying air crew handling needs review

Air crew handling has been constantly evolving, and to me this shows the systems in place are working.

With the outrage that we've already seen in the past 12 hours I'm really not sure how the country is going to react going forward when low level endemic Covid becomes a reality of life after our borders do eventually open.

Oblivian: Turns out from a PM chat that she's had the first shot.

Of course once again the 'experts' using another media release as opportunity to flip back onto defensive from supportive mode saying air crew handling needs review

haha it'll be funny if the genomic sequencing comes back to be

"Umm sir ... haven't seen this variant before, only half a virus. can we call Pfizer to see if it matches their mRNA sequencing - do you think they'll release their proprietary codes?"

sbiddle:

 

Air crew handling has been constantly evolving, and to me this shows the systems in place are working.

 

With the outrage that we've already seen in the past 12 hours I'm really not sure how the country is going to react going forward when low level endemic Covid becomes a reality of life after our borders do eventually open.

 

yeaaaap. Had the jab. Been away from family. During lvl3 when public controls were also in place (hence the low risk stature)

By 'experts' I mean, there seems to be one - you can guess, media keep approaching for comment at times like these - that is either for, or against. And comment depends on immediate situation but seems to change if looking at broader outcome. 

Yes. There has been investigations and possible change as a result. But c'mon. Flip Flop for days.

sbiddle:

 

With the outrage that we've already seen in the past 12 hours I'm really not sure how the country is going to react going forward when low level endemic Covid becomes a reality of life after our borders do eventually open.

 

Well as that's clearly going to depend on how effective the vaccines are at reducing transmission, how effective they are at reducing disease severity, what other measures might be needed to save lives of the most vulnerable who can't be protected by vaccine.

I don't think anyone can be sure.  That's why I'm annoyed at constant harping at the government to state firm "exit policies and a schedule", then no doubt if they did present "something", the same people demanding an unrealistic commitment based on what's now impossible to know for sure -  would only blame the government for changing it, getting it wrong - or "less than perfect" - later.

Sometimes it seems almost as if condemnation for not being able to predict the impossible is being used as "evidence" that there's a conspiracy to hide information.  

sbiddle:

 

What this does show is how important surveillance testing is, and why we should have saliva testing as a key part of that surveillance testing Literally every expert is recommending it, and yet the Govt are still showing little interest in it.

 

I was chatting to a friend last night who works in and about this sort of area and asked the same question - if other countries accept it as valid why are we not doing it?   She replied that it's not that our government doesn't believe it will work, its that they need to prove that our labs can successfully do the testing.