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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reviewed her comments when she said she was frustrated a Covid-infected person continued working at KFC and will not be apologising.

Case L, the sister of a Papatoetoe High School student, wasn't isolating at home and went to work at KFC Botany three days before she tested positive for the virus.

She said she was never told to isolate and only her sister received a text message saying she needed to be tested and isolate.

Auckland is in lockdown in alert level 3 after the community spread of the virus in South Auckland. The rest of the country is at alert level 2.

Ardern said today that  about 15 texts and phone calls were made to the family.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Image: NZ Herald
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Image: NZ Herald

"In my mind everyone at Papatoetoe High School getting a test felt really clear to me."

Ardern said if Case L's sister, Case I, had been tested when directed to by the school and the public health unit the situation could've been avoided.

"I'll go back to look at what we could have done in addition to that message."

The Section 70 order came into effect amid the second round of testing at the school.

Act MP David Seymour says the only way to find out if the Government is trying to save face, by blaming the latest Covid community cases, is to release details of what occurred.

"The Government needs to release full details of the contacts made with the family of cases L, M, N and O at the centre of the South Auckland cluster," he said.

Seymour claimed Ardern was "drip-feeding details" and avoiding scrutiny of her Government's performance while she "whips up anger" towards unnamed individuals.

"We have at least one member of the family in the public absolutely at odds with the Government story over the level of contact.

"The Prime Minister says she's checked the logs and she's satisfied - so release the logs prime minister; release all the evidence."

KFC worker wants apology from PM

Case L told Discovery the Prime Minister's comments - that she should have been self-isolating - were "upsetting", and she wanted an apology.

"It's not fair on our end that we're getting all this backlash for something that we haven't actually done," she told Discovery.

Ardern's office said letters from public health were sent to the family on February 17 and 19 saying they needed to be tested. Case L's family said such advice was never received.

"If they tried to contact us multiple times and send us letters and stuff, where is this evidence?" she told Discovery.

TESTING OF GYMGOERS AWAITED 

Meanwhile, whether or not Auckland is dealing with a bigger Covid-19 cluster will not be known until the next day or two, when a group of gymgoers are tested for the virus for the first time tomorrow.

People who were at City Fitness Papatoetoe at the same time as a man, who later tested positive for Covid, are considered to be casual plus contacts.

The last time the 21-year-old was at the gym, inside Hunters Plaza, was on Friday (February 26) between 3.25pm and 4.30pm.

As casual plus contacts, they need to have a test on or after day five from the date that they were last exposed to the case, the Ministry of Health said.

The official definition of a casual plus contact is someone who has been exposed to a case where there may be a higher risk of transmission - but who does not meet the criteria of a close contact.

Comments

Calm down David, what a drama queen, talk about trying to create a mountain out of a molehill! It's just not that important in the scheme of things. He'll be checking the prime minister's press releases next, just to make sure that no fullstops are upside down, imagine how excited that would get him!

There is clearly a disagreement with the PM saying one thing and "Case L" and their family saying something else. All Seymour is asking is for records to be released so we can decide for ourselves who is being most truthful. Surely the PM is being open and honest so it is in her interest to release the records. This is the opposite of being a drama queen -- rather than jump to any conclusion Seymour is simply asking for us to see the records so we have all the facts.

Yes I understand your point and that's exactly what Seymour wants the sheeple to believe.
In reality he's desperate to remain relevant and he's grasping at any insignificant thread he can to deflect attention to himself. Remember also, Seymour has been constantly braying throughout the pandemic about the need to relax border rules in the face of all scientific evidence that this is a bad idea.
This attempt to embarrass the Prime Minister over a piece of irrelevancy is just his latest attempt to keep his name in the lights, that's all.

Text messages and phone calls? lol. What next? send an email?
"I'll go back to look at what we could have done in addition to that message."
Here's a simple idea - From this day forward - Incidents such as this, will now require an immediate knock on the door !! smh

It's time to start punishing those people who do stupid things, like going out when they are symptomatic, going out while waiting for test results, and have church meetings or parties.
You can't keep letting people get off for these things.