The Government admits it has concerns around the testing of airline crew coming through the border, amid claims from Winston Peters that a "second border breach" led to a hotel worker contracting the virus in central Auckland.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins said this morning he was concerned about protocols for international airline crew, and the risk of the virus entering New Zealand.
"I'm meeting with Air New Zealand today to make sure that that's as tight as a drum," Hipkins told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. "I'm not 100 per cent convinced that it is at the moment. I'm going to be absolutely boring into that. There's no time for rest here. I've been doing this job for seven weeks. Every single day I've woken up thinking about Covid-19."
According to the Ministry of Health, "Air crew living in New Zealand and returning from high-risk layovers should self-isolate, have a Covid-19 test on day two after their arrival in New Zealand and continue to self-isolate until the results of that test have been returned."
Hipkins told Newstalk ZB that he wanted to tighten every possible avenue for the virus to get into New Zealand.
On the Rydges case - which is unrelated to air crew - Hipkins said CCTV footage and the worker's swipe-card access had been reviewed and he had not been in physical contact with any guests.
All staff and guests are being re-tested at Rydges after the maintenance worker's positive test. The strain of Covid is different to that involved in the big Auckland cluster that has forced the city into a two-week level-3 lockdown.
The new case comes on top of the massive exercise to test every frontline border worker in an effort to track down the source of the Americold outbreak which is on track to be the largest cluster yet.
By 11am yesterday, 97 per cent of the 2900 staff at Auckland managed isolation and quarantine facilities had been tested.
But so far the sources of the latest mystery case and the Americold cluster remain unknown, despite the Deputy Prime Minister saying there'd been "a second border breach" and someone should be sacked.
Winston Peters said the Health Minister was accountable for the failure in testing at the border, but he was not responsible so shouldn't resign and neither should the director general of health.
"What you have to do though is find out where the direction was followed and if it wasn't followed, why, and if it's inadequate in terms of an answer then that person must go - it's that simple."
Hipkins today defended the Government's approach, and that the Rydges case had been picked up early because the system worked.