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Covid-19: Pullman Hotel to be emptied - Chris Hipkins

01.27.2021 - By RNZPlay

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The Pullman Hotel will be emptied to allow the government to investigate how Covid-19 spread within it, Chris Hipkins says.

Two people in Auckland who completed managed isolation in the same hotel and at the same time as the woman at the centre of the Northland scare are now confirmed as infected with Covid -19.

They left the Pullman Hotel on the 15 January - two days after the Northland woman was allowed out of the isolation facility.

The two new positive cases have been living in the north of Auckland but will now isolate in the Jet Park quarantine facility.

The Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, says the pair may have been infected towards the end of their stay in managed isolation, after returning two negative tests each during their stay.

Hipkins, the Covid-19 Response Minister, announced on Thursday preliminary genomic sequencing results linked the cases in Auckland to the Northland case.

He told Morning Report the government will stop sending new returnees to the Pullman Hotel.

"We'll slowly empty it out for a little bit, just to see what we can find out about what might be happening there."

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