23 Oct 2020

Auckland Westpac employee tests positive for Covid-19

8:27 pm on 23 October 2020

The Westpac bank says an Auckland employee has tested positive for Covid-19.

Sydney, Australia - June 26, 2016: Close-up of Westpac signage. Westpac is one of the four largest banks in Australia.

(File photo) Photo: 123rf

The Ministry of Health today reported one new community case along with eight imported cases, and this evening confirmed the community case worked at a Westpac office in Auckland.

The person has a role where they do not normally come into contact with customers, and works at the bank's corporate head-office building.

They are a household contact of someone from the "marine employee cluster", and no close or casual contacts of the Westpac staff member has been identified.

Westpac said in a statement the person had not been in the office since Friday last week, and would not have become infectious until Tuesday of this week.

As soon as the person became aware that someone they lived with had contact with a Covid-19 case, they had stopped coming to the office, the bank said.

Westpac said the office would be deep cleaned.

And the Ministry said Westpac employees from their office don't need to self-isolate this weekend.

Meanwhile, health officials say one of the community cases with Covid-19 visited a marine store in north Auckland last weekend.

The Ministry of Health said the person visited the Burnsco store in Gulf Harbour marina for less than 15 minutes.

No close contacts have been identified at this stage and public health staff consider the risk to others who were at the store is low.

The marina has not been asked to close or do additional cleaning, but staff at the shop have been asked to watch for any symptoms.

No other details, including the exact time of the visit, are available at this stage.

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