'It's weird that I can't touch another human': The rugby stadium worth of close contacts going it alone

Monday, 30 August 2021

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield deliver the 1pm Covid-19 update for Sunday August 29.

Less than a year ago, a boisterous crowd of 31,000 cheered on the All Blacks at Wellington Stadium. Now the same number are alone at home, self-isolating in flats, sleepouts and bedrooms. Michelle Duff explores the psychological impact of being a close contact.

Mostly Brandee Thorburn feels a bit like a trapped tiger. A couple of times a day, the humans in her flat deliver her food.

At night they will set up in the conservatory next to her bedroom, leaving a cocktail outside her door so she can mime clinking glasses from behind an internal window. Then she sits on her bed to watch them play Mario Kart, projected on to a wall for her entertainment.

“It’s great, it just feels a bit zoo-ey because they are just looking in my room,” Thorburn, who is a second-year teacher at an Auckland school, says.

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Brandee Thorburn, a teacher at an Auckland school, self-isolates in her shared flat. She lives with four others.

“The days all blur together. I’ve done a week. I think I lose it at least once a day, just lying on the floor being like ‘Oh god, I’m stuck in this box’.

“At some point I realised I wasn’t talking to anyone by about midday, so I’ve just been yelling or shouting. I’m pacing around right now as I’m talking to you,” she continues.

“Last night I was like ‘I quite like my room, it’s cosy, I’m enjoying it,’ and my flatmates are like ‘are you okay?’.”

Supporters look on during the Bledisloe Cup match between the All Blacks and the Wallabies at Sky Stadium on October 11, 2020, in Wellington.

Thorburn has been self-isolating in her bedroom since the first Covid community case was discovered a fortnight ago, when she was confirmed as a close contact.

For the 28-year-old, it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions that began with the moment she found out and left work for a Covid-19 testing station.

“I kept thinking of new possible consequences. I was like ‘Oh no, I have to get a test’ and then that gets taken over by ‘Oh, I have to self-isolate in my room with no other human contact whatsoever’,” Thorburn says.

“Just the thought of not touching anyone for that long is just cruel and horrible. Then I was like ‘Oh god, what if I have Covid and I have to go to Jet Park?”. I thought ‘Oh gosh, am I infected?’ ”

After months of being Covid-free, getting a handle on the numbers impacted by the Delta variant is starting to feel like watching a greyhound bound after a mechanical rabbit. As of Monday, more than 32,000 contacts have been linked to the outbreak, around the size of the maskless Bledisloe Cup crowd that cheered the All Blacks on at Wellington Stadium last October – an image that went viral for its implausibility in the face of a global pandemic.

There are more than 500 locations of interest linked to the cluster.

Ari Kerssens, 27, says it's hard not being around other people. He was also set to work at New Zealand Fashion Week, one of the first blind models to do so, and is disappointed.

New Zealand’s Covid-19 defence strategy of elimination relies heavily on contact tracing and self-isolation, where people are identified as close contacts, casual or casual plus contacts depending on their proximity to a confirmed case. For those who work or live with a confirmed case, it’s a strict schedule; two weeks of self-isolation and Covid tests immediately and at 5 and 12 days after the last exposure.

As the death toll has risen across the ditch, and with shops and schools shuttered from Tokyo to London, Kiwis have been able to live relatively normal lives. While outbreak should not have come as a surprise, the reality of being thrown back into lockdown and the ensuing disruption has hit many of us hard.

But for those considered close contacts, the restrictions on daily life are even more pronounced. Humans are social animals; we crave company, and touch.

‘I’d rather this than Covid’

Ari Kerssens gets a Covid test. He says he’s not really afraid of getting Covid himself, but doesn't want to pass it on.

The anxiety of potentially having Covid combined with being alone in a confined space for two weeks is its own kind of battle. “It’s really, really challenging and is going to bring with it boredom, frustration and loneliness,” says Otago University Associate Professor Susanna Every-Palmer, who interviewed more than 2000 New Zealanders for a study that examined lockdown’s psychological toll. “It’s a trial that has to be endured, but luckily it is time-limited.”

While some contacts are isolating together, others, like Thorburn and fellow Aucklander Ryan Langford, have cloistered themselves into a bedroom. Langford found out via an alert on the Covid app that he’d been at a Countdown supermarket on Sunday, August 15, at the same time as a subsequently confirmed case. “My first thought was ‘f…’, because I did MIQ back in November and I knew what two weeks being stuck in a room was like, and this time it wasn’t catered,” he says. “Even with the internet, if you’ve got nothing else to do you get sick of it.”

In the first few days he drank a lot, trying to drown out the disappointment of missing out on a planned trip to Queenstown with his partner. He’s since turned to energy drinks, and was watching a horror movie when Stuff called.

Even from his room, he feels like he’s a burden. Despite the isolation measures they’re taking – Langford cooks alone late at night, sanitises everything and uses a different bathroom – he and his housemates decided it’s not safe for his flatmate’s young son to stay until Langford gets a second negative Covid test.

“I am fully vaccinated, so I was less worried, but I was more worried that I’d give it to my flatmates,” he says. “It obviously sucks, but I’d rather this than catch Covid at Bunnings.”

Disaster averted

Elsewhere in Auckland, Ari Kerssens was kicking himself that he’d chosen a Sunday for a shopping trip to Farmers in Westfield Albany. “I literally never go to the [North] Shore, I was so hungover, I don’t even know how it happened,” the 27-year-old lamented.

It wasn’t until a few days later that Kerssens and two friends found out they'd been at a location of interest. Now they were hunkering down at home with two cats and a bunny. “We ended up getting a test, which was my first test. None of us are symptomatic so I think we’re okay,” Kerssens said. “I don’t care if I catch it, I’m not really afraid for my own sake and I’m pretty confident we didn’t. I obviously don’t want to transmit it.”

Challenges so far included online shopping, which Kerssens managed to mess up. In his defence, he is blind, he says. “Everyone was busy doing their own thing and I was trying to put in this order and missed out a bunch of stuff. But come on, I don’t know what’s in the friggen cupboards, I can’t see. We got wine, but we forgot like, eggs, and didn’t get enough milk and vegetables and all the important healthy things.”

Even with his priority delivery due to disability, the order would take two days to arrive. Kerssens counted himself lucky he was with others. ”If I was on my own I’d be screwed because I’m a kitchen hazard, thankfully I’ve got two other people and one is a good cook, so, disaster averted.”

Still, two days in, despite a daily yoga and study schedule, he was already missing friends. “I’m a super-extroverted person so when I don’t get that social interaction my brain turns to mush. You can’t really substitute, or I can’t, being in a room full of people.”

And he was bummed to be missing New Zealand Fashion Week, where he was due to model for the first time. Overall though, he felt positive. “The leadership has done an amazing job, but now we’ve got to all be leaders and stick out a couple of weeks of really s…y times. Delta isn’t playing.”

Waves of freedom

In her research, Dr Every-Palmer found two-thirds of people coped well last lockdown, but there were significantly higher rates of distress and anxiety across the population. Around half of those surveyed experienced loneliness, and isolation made this worse.

Positive actions included sticking to a routine, regular exercise, deliberately thinking about things that are going well, ticking things off a to-do list, trying something new – and booking a vaccine. “That’s an excellent coping strategy, because it’s a way of taking action against a threat,” she says.

Ways to send yourself down a rabbit hole of despair include constantly refreshing news feeds, drinking too much, eating junk food, or risk-taking behaviours like ignoring lockdown. She says joining Facebook groups that ply misinformation can be driven by stress. “People are worried, so they minimise the risk.”

Back in her room, Thorburn is awaiting her daily call from the Ministry of Health. At least that’s who she thinks she’s talking to. “I assume they’re working for the ministry? I don’t know where they’re from. They call you to ask how you are, but to also check you’re following the rules.”

Along with the calls, she receives a survey each day about 6am. “They also text you to say ‘We sent you the survey, can you do the survey?’ and sometimes they send another text saying ‘Thanks for doing the survey, we’re going to call you.’ Today they’ve sent me,” she checks, “Four text messages.”

When Stuff reaches Langford again, he is on a beach.

His two weeks are up.

“I feel so much better. I’ve walked about 20ks,” he says, his voice slightly muffled in the wind.

“I’m still going. I just really needed to stretch my legs. I misjudged a wave and I’m all wet, but at least that was a possibility.”