1. Question No. 1—Prime MinisterDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime MinisterORAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Prime Minister1. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement A small handful are not due their day 12 test—but I would caution the member that those are the contacts we know about"; if so how many contacts are still awaiting a test result now?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): As at 9 a.m. this morning we have 515 known contacts in the South Island. Of that 15 are overdue their day 12 test and are being actively followed up by public health units. Seven are not yet due their day 12 test. I would remind the member that the restrictions that are in place at the moment across New Zealand in some areas are there as a matter of caution given that we are dealing with a Delta outbreak. We cannot be 100 percent certain that we know every single contact that was had in this outbreak or how many of them may be in the South Island. It is better that we get this right and ensure that we do not find a positive case in the South while we're at lower alert levels which could have devastating consequences.David Seymour: Why wouldn't the Government simply isolate those remaining 22 people so the other million South Islanders can address other aspects of their wellbeing—such as the survival of their businesses their children's education and their healthcare—at lower alert levels?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: All contacts are required to isolate. They are in isolation. They in some cases have not yet had their final day 12 tests or in other cases they're not yet overdue them. Yesterday if I recall correctly amongst the numbers that we reported of those contacts that we had roughly 40 percent of them returned positive results on their day 12 test so it does demonstrate that they're important. You then need to contact trace around those individuals and ensure that if they have exposure events there aren't knock-on cases. So even though they're isolated caution would still suggest keeping the alert levels where they are not only till we get through that period but also because we cannot be 100 percent certain we have every known contact. David Seymour: Did the Prime Minister understand it would take three weeks to be sure there were no cases in the South Island when she first announced a short sharp lockdown and if she did why didn't she say so at the time?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When we discovered case A we did not know at what point that person was infected or indeed if they were at the beginning of the chain. We've since discovered that Delta was effectively in our community for more than a week. Unlike the August outbreak where we saw potentially an outbreak that had been in the community for possibly three weeks Delta got a head start that had a far more devastating effect. We've since modelled that we could have had this week upwards of 500 cases a day had we not locked down. So we went short and sharp while we identified information and since then identified information that Delta did have a big head start on us and that we needed to be careful.David Seymour: How long does the Prime Minister believe it is sustainable to maintain its current strategy if a single initial case can lead to lockdowns that take weeks and weeks and weeks before the Government has any confidence about lifting them?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I'm going to start by correcting the member. That single initial case had hundreds of cases around it. It's simply not correct to assume that we had one case here and that everything that's been done was because of one case. We literally had hundreds. You can see in the outbreak now we're working very hard to ensure that that doesn't have a negative effect on people in the South Island. I would actually just finish by reflecting on the comments made by a business owner in the South Island who says "There's a whole [lot of] risk involved [with] us as well under level 2. We've got people coming in our doors so you know the risk of us getting a case on site and getting shut down for a prolonged period of time is quite significant [to] us. … I think Delta changes things a little bit and [I'm] definitely supportive of a more cautious approach"."