Credit;PA
New Zealand is no longer free from the new coronavirus after health officials say two women who flew from London to see a dying parent had tested positive.
But before they were tested, the women had been given an exemption to leave quarantine on compassionate grounds and had travelled from Auckland to Wellington by car.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said that as part of their travel plan, the women had no contact with any people or any public facilities on their road trip.
Nevertheless, the new cases have sparked a round of testing in New Zealand for anybody who might have been close to the women.
That includes passengers and staff on their flights, which arrived via Brisbane in Australia, other people at the Auckland hotel they initially stayed at in quarantine, and a family member they met in Wellington.
The women remain in isolation in Wellington and have delayed the funeral of their parent until they have recovered.
Until Tuesday, New Zealand had gone more than three weeks without any new cases and had declared that everybody who had contracted the virus had recovered, aside from the 22 people who died.
An expert has told peers he would be “very surprised” if the UK avoided a second coronavirus wave.
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee heard that countries like China and Iran have experienced second waves of the outbreak, and that Hong Kong is nearing its third wave.
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, told the committee that with lockdown restrictions easing, it is likely the UK will also see a return of the Covid-19 epidemic.
He said: “I think it is possible that we might not have a second wave.
“But I think given the fact that the lockdown has now been largely released, we’re now back in action, and we have still, pretty rapidly declining, but a pretty reasonable level of infections in the community, I would be very surprised if we avoided the second wave.”
Sir John added that this posed two questions.
This would be whether there would be a number of single outbursts around the country, and then a second wave, or if the UK was just going to get a second wave and when.
Related – The tracing app is doomed to fail
