January 25

The big news here is that yesterday (Sunday here) a 56 year old woman, travelling from Europe, who had been through 14 days of MIQ in Auckland and had tested negative for COVID on Days 3 and 12, began to feel unwell a few days after discharge and was confirmed positive Saturday evening (a week after leaving isolation).  Before that she visited a number of places in Northland, which is the area where we are.  She recorded all her visits on the COVID Tracer app.  The Ministry of Health has published the list of businesses and times and anyone who was in those establishments during the same time period is encouraged to get a test and to isolate until they get a negative result.  Store employees where she went are doing the same thing. The country is holding its breath to see if we might go into lockdown.  One community case, but it is being taken very seriously since it threatens the free way of life that NZers are enjoying! 

The Ministry of Health is doing a genomic sequencing of the infected sample, so that they can ascertain where the infection came from.  There is some concern that it may be a new strain, but they also want to find out if the woman became infected while she was in MIQ or whether she entered the country with the virus and incubated it while in MIQ.  The latter is thought to be unlikely, because it would involve much longer incubation that has been known to date.  (They are hoping to match the genetics of her sample to a sample from the MIQ facility or, worst case, to a known UK variant.)

This is the first case in the country to show up after someone spent 14 days in managed isolation, and the first case in the community since November.  About 100,000 people have been through MIQ so far. We think that the managed isolation process is very rigorous and safe, but the general population here is quite suspicious of it.

We feel well and tomorrow will be two weeks since our most recent negative test (all our tests have been negative).  We have had no contact with the infected woman or the MIQ facility she was in.  Out of an abundance of caution (that’s a phrase that has been used a lot here), we went to see if we could get a test earlier this morning at a local testing center.  A lot of others had the same idea and we thought we’d be in a line of cars all day, so we came home.  We will stay close to home this week.  Frances is running online focus groups anyway, so it was always going to be a work week.  You can run, but you can’t hide!

In other news, before all this broke, we spent yesterday visiting Frances’ sister Helen at her farm at Bayly’s Beach.  It was a treat to see the whole gang and all Helen’s kids were there.  Since they are spread across the country, this is a rarity.  It was great catch-up and a legendary spread for dinner!

We took a quick visit to our piece of land, hard to beat the view and the welcoming committee!

Backing up to Saturday:  We walked to the local farmers’ market in the morning and enjoyed browsing and buying local produce.  Everything is very fresh – and no single-use plastic!  We took our own bags of course, as that is the customary environmentally friendly thing to do.  Strict controls and rapid tracing and quarantine allow activities like farmers’ markets to continue.

We also wanted to tell you about the swan plant in our backyard.  Swan plant is in the milkweed family and attracts monarch butterflies.  It looks very different from the milkweed in our Michigan garden.  The pods do look a little like swans!