The close-plus and casual-plus labels for Covid-19 contacts were overly complicated and led to rules being broken in Auckland's February Covid outbreak, a review has found.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo: Pool / NZME
The government has released a review by an independent panel into the 15-person outbreak which largely centred around Papatoetoe and had 6000 contacts including students, KFC drive-through customers and gym-goers.
Instead of categorising people as either casual or close contacts, the Ministry of Health suddenly created close-plus and casual-plus, and introduced more stringent requirements for people considered casual contacts.
The review, headed by Sir Brian Roche, said the new definitions were supposed to increase clarity but ended up being more confusing and that contributed to "non-compliance."
"This was a particular problem when members of the same household were placed in different categories," the review said.
A KFC worker who had been at work and tested positive found herself in the spotlight when the prime minister said she should have been at home.
Her sibling, a Papatoetoe High School student, had been categorised as casual-plus contact of a student with the virus.
But the worker said she had never been told to isolate, and in previous outbreaks contacts of casual contacts had not needed to isolate.
The ministry had ditched the new labels for the most recent Wellington case.
The Roche review also found the South Auckland community was often demonised on social media or the media for not complying with rules when in fact they had mobilised well to try to stop the outbreak.
The government's response to outbreaks had improved greatly by February but there was still more work to do, it said.
The focus of its Covid-19 response which was initially set up as a crisis management system, needed to change because the virus was here long term, it said.
That meant having better border testing, introducing vaccine passports, getting people vaccinated and updating how alert levels work in any outbreaks.