Bishop Chris; Hipkins ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you to the Minister for the update. I've just got a series of questions that I think people would be interested in the answer to. When were officials first advised of the Sydney case when were Ministers notified and when was the public notified? [Bell rung]SPEAKER: Sorry. Self-rule on the buttons—we're going to have a few problems.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I was first informed around 8.45 p.m. last night. My understanding is that the advice came through to officials not long before that. So within an hour or two before that New Zealand officials were notified of the case. But we certainly weren't aware of the case when we made the decision to implement the pause. That was made at around about 5 o'clock—somewhere between 5 and 6 o'clock last night.CHRIS BISHOP (National): I think one of the things that many people are a little bit frustrated by is the length of time it took to bring to the public's attention the locations of interest where this particular individual had been. I wonder if the Minister could offer some comment on why it took till sort of mid-morning and constantly refreshing the Ministry of Health website to get a really full list of exactly where this person had been given the information was known the night before or at least a lot of the information was known the night before.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): The interview process started last night. It continued again this morning. The interview process is very extensive. It goes through not just where people have been but exactly where within the location they've been. If we take a venue like Te Papa for example which is listed twice on the locations of interest that's a very large venue with a lot of people. So the contact tracers work hard to identify within that group of people where the risk actually lies. That does involve quite an extensive interviewing process. The first batch of locations of interest was released just before 9 o'clock this morning. Bear in mind that part of the assembly of the locations of interest assembling all that information together involved talking to people on the other side of the Tasman. There's a time zone difference and then of course there's the fact that it's the middle of the night and people do sleep for some of that time. I can say that the team working on this though did work through the night to pull the information required together. I'd also note and I think that this is important for people to understand it is not necessarily the locations but the people who were at the locations at the time of potential exposure that is the important part. So the fact that things may have happened at those locations—people may have been at those locations say this morning for example before they were notified—that in itself does not necessarily increase the risk. The risk existed when people were there at the same time as the case was there. CHRIS BISHOP (National): Just in relation to that there have been reports that people who were at Te Papa for example at the time listed on the locations of interest information on the website who scanned in with the NZ COVID Tracer app have not yet received a notification through the app. Has he been advised of issues with that and are he and his officials looking into that?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I'm very happy to follow that up. It may well be that the notifications have only been sent to people who have scanned in to certain parts of Te Papa but I'll follow that up and find out.CHRIS BISHOP (National): The other bit of information in relation to that is that I'm told that it's very difficult to actually register if you were at a location of interest. Some MPs may be aware of the fact that the Ministry of Health website says Call Healthline" and if you call Healthline there's currently I think a 60-minute wait and the prompt says "Go to the website" and the website just says "Call Healthline." So is there a way of making it a little bit easier for people to register? We are dealing with quite a large number of people actually because as the Minister's noted Te Papa had probably hundreds of people there—I'm told there's an art exhibit there—over the weekend. So is there a way of making that simpler for people?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): One of the parts of the contact-tracing process and one of the parts of the notification process is also making sure that Healthline and others who are dealing with people's queries have as much accurate information in as timely a way as possible. For example when we announce locations of interest we make sure that Healthline get that information if not slightly before at least at the same time as the announcement is made so that when people ring in they can disseminate accurate information to people. That is one of the lessons that have been learnt—we've got to make sure that Healthline are fully looped in. I do appreciate that there will be wait times for people calling Healthline. Please stay on the line if you have a concern. But also my message is please don't call Healthline if you don't have a good reason for calling Healthline at the moment. So if you're not in Wellington and you just want to know what does this alert level change means for you please don't call Healthline. We want that line and those call centres to be focused on the people who really need to get the information related to this.CHRIS BISHOP (National): Why did the ministry website this morning continue the confusing nomenclature of "casual plus" "close plus" which I think most people agree on reflection from the February cluster outbreak was deeply confusing for people? I think Sir Brian Roche has noted that in and amongst other experts as well. When you logged on earlier this morning there continued to be that use of that terminology and in particular for example in relation to the Rydges it said "Get a test around day 5" and it's now actually been updated to say "Stay at home get a test". So some of the actual advice to people has changed over the course of the morning even though the actual location of interest hasn't changed. So I wonder if you could provide a view on that.Hon Grant Robertson: That'll be because we want to get information out.CHRIS BISHOP: I'm trying to ask serious questions here. Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): One of the realities of dealing with this is that advice does change as more information comes to light. So we try to share information as quickly as we can but the reality is if we waited until we had all of the information assembled to be able to give people very clear guidance of exactly what's required of people in certain situations we wouldn't be telling anyone anything at this point. The reality is we try to share it as quickly as we can. As more information comes to light the advice will change and so we do ask people to keep tuning in.CHRIS BISHOP (National): My point is around the nomenclature. Is the Government going to continue to use the fourfold classification of close close plus casual and casual plus and—Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: It's not on the site any more.CHRIS BISHOP: Well I know it's not on the site any more but it was on the site this morning and that's what I want to know from the Minister: why was it on the site this morning when most people I think thought it had been done away with after the confusion from the February outbreak?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): As I did indicate people were working very quickly overnight to get information out there as quickly as possible. That differentiation between casual and casual plus was not deemed to be helpful and therefore it has not continued to be used.CHRIS BISHOP (National): Was the Government advised by the ministry to close the New South Wales - New Zealand travel bubble earlier than yesterday?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): No."