Indian man with coronavirus fled isolation for shopping in New Zealand (Performance)
Auckland, New Zealand:
A 32-year-old man who recently returned from India and tested positive for the deadly coronavirus will be charged with missing from a managed Auckland isolation center to a supermarket, media reports said.
The man, the latest new case of COVID-19 in New Zealand, escaped from an isolation area at around 6:50 p.m. local time on Tuesday, the New Zealand Herald reported.
He was sent to a quarantine center after being confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus. However, the man was asymptomatic and did not appear to have come into close or casual contact with anyone, the report said.
The man, whose identity was not immediately known, came from Delhi on July 3, he added.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins called the man’s actions “selfish” and said he would face charges, the report said.
But he would not describe the episode as a failure of government processes, and even if those processes will now be examined, he said that if anyone were to apologize, it was the man who broke the law.
Hipkins said the man appeared to have made a momentary decision and rushed through a space where the fence was replaced.
A security guard watched the area but confused the man with contractors working on the fence. The alarm went off within minutes, but security could not find the man.
Hipkins said the man may have spent 20 minutes in a Victoria St West supermarket, and that he voluntarily returned 70 minutes after he left, the report added.
He will be charged and is now facing a six-month prison sentence or a $ 4,000 fine, the report added.
After the positive human test result arrived today, supermarket staff are now self-insulating and will also be tested for the virus, Stuff reported.
“CCTV footage from the supermarket confirmed that there was no close contact between the man and a staff member or customers during his stay there,” said the chief of managed segregation and in his forties, air commodore Darryn Webb.
There are now 23 active COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, all in controlled isolation or quarantine, and 1,187 confirmed cases.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
