'No one checking': NZ coronavirus patrol non-existent: traveller
Entering New Zealand from the country at the centre of a global virus outbreak, an Air China passenger says no one aboard his flight was screened. The passenger, who did not want to be named, told the Herald he arrived in Auckland from Beijing on Monday evening. "There was no one checking passengers' temperatures at Customs, through immigration, anywhere," he said. "I just walked out." Even though he and other passengers mentioned they had recently travelled to Wuhan, they left Auckland Airport only clutching a health pamphlet, he said. It was poles apart from the health screening he had seen in China, where travellers' temperatures were taken at multiple points at Hong Kong airport. Despite feeling fine and seeing no one on his flight seeming to be ill, he said the lack of screening made him nervous. "Every single person on the flight was wearing a mask, protecting themselves and trying not to spread anything. "I'm perfectly fine, but it was very unusual." The passenger's concerns follow comments online by shocked passengers who recently entered New Zealand unscreened. One passenger, who returned to Auckland via Hong Kong with their family only two days ago, took to Reddit to write about their arrival from a self-imposed isolation. They wrote that travellers faced strict precautions at Hong Kong airport and filled out questionnaires on their recent travel. "At the entrance of Hong Kong International Airport, workers were checking documents and only allowing those who had flights within 24 hours in. "Everyone was wearing masks. Before passing through security, temperatures were taken again." But when they arrived in Auckland, there was no indication of the global coronavirus outbreak but a few posters and a few people wearing face masks. "The customs worker who served us wasn't even wearing a mask and there was no temperature check," the passenger wrote. "The E-gates were still open too. It would've been very easy for someone to slip through." Despite extensive media coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, the passenger wrote that it felt as if the outbreak "didn't exist" in New Zealand. "It was a stark contrast from my experience in China and Hong Kong. I'm wondering whether it was because my flight was from Hong Kong rather than mainland China and because it was early in the morning and they had not yet implemented the new procedures they said they would in the news." A Ministry of Health spokesman said that from last Monday, public health staff have been at Christchurch and Auckland International Airports as flights from mainland China arrive. "Staff have been taking the temperatures of anyone who is feeling unwell and anyone with a temperature higher than 38 degrees Celsius will be referred for appropriate assessment," he said. "Yesterday public health staff met approximately 2500 passengers on six scheduled flights and 7 passengers and crew on one private flight arriving at Auckland Airport and 230 passengers and crew on one flight arriving at Christchurch International Airport from mainland China." None of those travellers met the suspected case definition for Novel coronavirus.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
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Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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