Coronavirus: The Road Trip That Turned Ashley Bloomfield from Hero to Zero

When the plane wheels ground against the runway at Auckland international airport, the two sisters would have been stressed and exhausted.

They’d crossed the globe from London, via Doha and Brisbane, to be with their dying mother. But first, they had to sit out 14 days of managed isolation at Auckland’s Novotel Ellerslie, living every day with the knowledge that tomorrow could be too late.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield has said the two women who drove to Wellington should have been tested prior to leaving Auckland.
They arrived on June 7 – a Sunday. New Zealand was still in lockdown level 2, but Kiwis were already mentally throwing off the shackles of COVID-19. We’d gone 16 days with no new cases and politicians and businesspeople were clamouring for a move to level one – the removal of all restrictions except border control.

The jubilant mood must have seemed strangely foreign to the two Kiwis – one in her 30s and one in her 40s – returning from a country mourning its 40,465 dead.

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