2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2508742 20-Jun-2020 14:16

Maybe I will convince my wife to share her perspectives on here directly (as she's a better judge of what she can/can't ethically share etc) but in her eyes it seems all this stuff was eminently predictable.

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Oblivian

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#2508752 20-Jun-2020 14:51

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/queensland-to-charge-travellers-up-to-200-a-night-for-quarantine-20200618-p553qy.html

After a $19m bill so far..

Queensland is set to begin charging overseas arrivals quarantined in hotels up to $200 for each day of their fortnight's stay, after the national cabinet signed off on the plan last month...

It means the total 14-day fee will amount to $2800 for a single adult, or $3710 for two staying in the same room.

JaseNZ

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#2508757 20-Jun-2020 15:16

Can I fly too Aussie without leaving transit and fly back to get a free 14 day holiday ??

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding : Ice cream man , Ice cream man

ezbee

1677 posts

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#2508797 20-Jun-2020 15:20

Australia is counting the cost of isolating its returnees, as mentioned above starting to charge in some places.
Cost for coronavirus quarantine accommodation in AU Government hotels rises above $118 million
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-19/coronavirus-hotel-quarantine-60,000-people-cost/12363288

Not as free and easy as ours in a way.
You are taken to isolation by police or defense force staff, and you stay in the room all the time.

....
Locked inside his central Sydney room, Edward Ratanasena said while he was grateful to be in a hotel-apartment with a kitchen and washing machine, he was disappointed in the cleanliness of his lodgings.

Nearing the end of his two-week stint, he said he was eager to get out.

"There's people outside our doors 24/7 to make sure we don't leave. It doesn't make it feel very nice, it makes it feel like a jail," he said.

"I think this is a really small price to pay on my part and the Government's part to keep the rest of Australia safe and I'm happy to do it if it means keeping the rest of the country safe."
....

Seems they might be seeing some issues too with the hotel based model, and had outbreak in a hotel ?.

....
Professor McLaws says a purpose built quarantine station may be needed for future arrivals to prevent outbreaks at quarantine hotels as seen in Melbourne.(Supplied: UNSW)
"There needs to be a safe place for both the staff and returned travellers where it's set up for this," Professor McLaws said.
....

Though it seems most practical to make the Hotel model work with sensible management , with difficult people isolated to more secure facilities.
I can't help thinking that responsibilities were 'devolved' to the Hotels that lacked resource to manage.
Testing devolved to DHBs or or whatever looking at their budgets, like how much do these tests cost ?
Plus other conflicting priorities.
If one has to see again what looks like rationing of Testing and PPE , while those fronting say there is no shortage of either ......

Good thing with all this public exposure we will see more tightening up.

Edit, Cut and paste tidyup

xlinknz

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#2508808 20-Jun-2020 15:38

JaseNZ:

Can I fly too Aussie without leaving transit and fly back to get a free 14 day holiday ??

In theory yes i.e. those leaving and returning would get 14 days in a hotel but I suspect that will change very soon

Add from what I read the 14 days quarantine as of Tues gone is not a "holiday" anymore and is now very strict

duckDecoy

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#2508853 20-Jun-2020 15:57

MikeB4:

All pay and no responsibility. Really (insert string of expletives of choice) me off

Warning: anecdote

Speaking of pay, my friend was running one of the testing stations. She told me they tried to recruit nurses for the hotels but offered just over $30/hr to do it. All of the decent and competent nurses said doubt it mate, there's no way they are going to risk their health plus have to deal with being responsible for keeping people abiding by the rules for the same pay rate they can easily earn just sitting in a doctors office. The ones who went were not the ones she would want being there.

mattwnz

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#2508883 20-Jun-2020 17:28

ezbee:

Australia is counting the cost of isolating its returnees, as mentioned above starting to charge in some places.
Cost for coronavirus quarantine accommodation in AU Government hotels rises above $118 million
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-19/coronavirus-hotel-quarantine-60,000-people-cost/12363288

It is interesting that ours has cost over $80million. I wonder why ours is so high proportionally. Surely the number returning to Oz would be proportionally more that the number returning to NZ? Yes, it should be user pays now. People have a choice to return or not, and have had enough time to do so. Perhaps they could make exceptions on a case by case basis, in rare circumstances where their travel has been blocked

Managed isolation has to be the same as quarantine, as the whole point of it is to isolate that person from other people. I just feel we are repeating the same mistakes we made initially when we initially allowed self isolation. The virus only needs o find one of the leaks in quarantine, to get out into the community. Potentially it already has with the recent two cases, just hopefully noone else caught it. It was a failure of the system inplace which shouldn't have occurred. I fear we could getting some cases in the community (outside of quarantine) within the next few weeks.

Also what is the difference between cruise ships, and hotels, as you have a large number of people, some potentially infected, concentrated within a building? One is on the land, one is on the sea. Is the air conditioning and circulation systems sharing air between rooms? This virus can thrive on cruise ships, resthomes etc .

mattwnz

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#2508886 20-Jun-2020 17:43

dejadeadnz:

I find it somewhat disconcerting that people keep focusing on these selfish and idiotic individuals. Sure, their attitude and behaviour is contemptible but honestly human nature sucks. Why is anyone surprised? There should have been processes to protect the normal majority from them from the outset.

Yes, it is down to the system to protect NZers. That is why we have been let down. We have already had one chance to roll back time, to a time when we have no Covid cases, at a 100+billion dollar cost. I fear we risk repeating similar types of mistakes again, by again trusting people that are coming into NZ. However the system shouldn't require trusting that individuals will cooperate. We need the system to be strict and rigerious, to protect all NZers, and remove all risk of the virus getting through the border. It appears to be far stricter in Oz, and I am sure Chinas is also very strict. We were assured the border was watertight. But they don't seem to be using that wording now.

Now they are saying they are going to audit procedures and isolation facilities, to make sure they are 'rock solid'. Why wasn't that done when it was introduced? Rock solid should mean that the virus can't get through the border, and it should have been rock solid months ago.

Fred99

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#2508896 20-Jun-2020 18:36

dejadeadnz:

Two new cases. Bloomfield trying to tell everyone that it's because the pandemic is getting worse overseas and more people are returning. It just couldn't have anything to do with the fact that there was incredibly inconsistent testing (or even non-existent testing) amongst the arrivals in isolation until very recently, could it? /Tui ad. The PR efforts are nauseating.

Not detecting any cases for 22 (?) consecutive days IMO seems very dodgy - especially given the incredibly stupid lack of testing.

Maybe you have a comment about the legality of people in quarantine refusing tests. From my quick look at the legislation, "treatment" for an epidemic notifiable disease can be enforced. I can't see specific mention of a diagnostic test - but it seems crazy if people can refuse. I believe compulsory treatment for TB is reasonably common - some people don't like the idea of taking antibiotics for > 6 months.

I do agree with Bloomfield about the pandemic getting worse overseas. Multiply the number of confirmed cases by the reported case fatality rate per country, then you get an approximation of how many undiagnosed cases there were a few weeks ago. For example the UK has a case fatality rate of 14% and 300,000 "confirmed" cases, so real cases a few weeks ago would have probably been at least 4 million. Similar in the US. These are "first world" nations with supposedly world-class health systems. The sh*t is going to hit the fan - C-19 is now totally out of control globally. >180,000 new cases "confirmed" yesterday - probably means a million actual new cases per day.

frankv

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#2508898 20-Jun-2020 18:42

ezbee:

Oh the against my human rights to get temperature or tested.
We certainly don't need these people even getting on the plane.

What would the conditions and penalties in the countries they are coming from for such refusals for reasonable measures.

Hell we are even paying the bill for you !

Before people get on the plane and before they cross the immigration boarder we have a lot more ability to elicit co-operation.
Deportation maybe off the table as Australia would not want them back, but if its possible then get tested or deported perhaps.

Before boarding perhaps have everyone sign a declaration of co-operation with quarantine.
While to a degree a legal document , really its more to make it something people will more likely read as they are signing it as statutory declaration.
Including an assurance to pay all isolation/quarantine costs with amount spelled out for 14 or 28 days in big type.
Even better with a large bond prepaid for the quarantine/isolation costs, to be refunded upon conclusion.
Predicated to agreeing to testing etc otherwise you don't get on the plane in the first place.

Any later refusal, there goes your bond and you get a bill for all costs of the 28 days of isolation, including transfer to a much less nice stricter isolation facility for your and our protection.

We are by nature nice and kind, and for the 99% this is all good, but the 1% seem to be growing in self entitlement.

Pandering to this 1% needs to stop.

Whilst I totally agree with the desired outcome, bear in mind that many of these people are NZ residents with a right to enter their own country.

I don't know the legalities of setting conditions on someone's rights. That may only be possible under a State of Emergency?

tdgeek

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#2508900 20-Jun-2020 18:48

How many incoming are from OZ and not OZ? OZ is doing better than us, Ive read that a lot here, and the 5 cases we have imported are from UK, India and Pakistan. You'd have t guarantee we will get cases from such regions, but Im unsure of the mix between OZ and other nations

frankv

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#2508908 20-Jun-2020 19:06

mattwnz: It is interesting that ours has cost over $80million. I wonder why ours is so high proportionally.

Yes, the figure mentioned was about $4k per person, which is about $300 per day, which seems pretty steep for a bed and 3 meals. Especially since the government is booking in bulk on a very flat hotel accommodation market. I'd have thought they ought to get it for about $100 per person-night, including meals. $150 tops. So I guess they're adding in the cost of airport transfers and testing and security and so on, up to and including Digby's salary.

surfisup1000

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#2508914 20-Jun-2020 19:27

Todays 2 new cases were detected on the 12th day of quarantine right?

Doesn't that mean the 2 week clock resets on everyone they were quarantined with?

I don't understand either as to why their covid status wasn't detected in an earlier test. Did they pickup the virus while in quarantine?

Fred99

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#2508923 20-Jun-2020 19:50

surfisup1000:

Todays 2 new cases were detected on the 12th day of quarantine right?

Doesn't that mean the 2 week clock resets on everyone they were quarantined with?

I don't understand either as to why their covid status wasn't detected in an earlier test. Did they pickup the virus while in quarantine?

Median incubation period from time of infection to onset of symptoms is ~ 5 days, most cases aren't infectious after 12 days from onset of symptoms, one test has approx 25% chance of being false-negative.

So 5 days plus 12 is 17 - longer than the 14 day quarantine period. So I don't think we're going to stop this at the border even if we follow the procedure we should have been doing. There are going to be "outliers" who get through. If we're increasing the numbers allowed to return, and the chance of people returning being infected is growing at the rate it probably truly is (ie not WHO or various country's "official" stats) - then we're doomed. We delayed the inevitable for a couple of months only.

On2or3wheels

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#2508927 20-Jun-2020 20:11

dejadeadnz:

More than two weeks (not two days, two hours or whatever) after the flight, we will have everyone on the flight tested! What a splendid effort. Someone give Bloomfield a medal. This guy needs to be fired.

Yeah, and all the members of the flight were in quarrantine as if they had Covid, so it's not quite the drama you're making out.
You can also get false negatives so it's better to treat them as if they have it anyway.

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