A Tauranga man, whose business was incorrectly listed as a Covid-19 location of interest, says the Ministry of Health failed to contact him beforehand and he is still waiting to hear from them.

This comes as two other Tauranga businesses also raised concerns over the Ministry's policy for listing them as locations of interest over the past month.

The Ministry of Health publishes daily updates to their contact tracing locations of interest list in order to help identify individuals who may have been linked to public exposure events.

However, a number of discrepancies have been raised in the Tauranga area recently, including a gym and a local bar over the past month and an ice cream van from November last year.

The Ministry listed a Mr Whippy ice cream truck stationed at Memorial Park on Saturday, November 20 as a location of interest.

However, the Mr Whippy truck in question had left the park hours before the apparent exposure event. The Ministry later amended the listing to accurately represent the fact it was a Pied Piper truck linked with potential exposure.

Mr Whippy ice cream van operator Ross Killoh tells SunLive he was not informed by the Ministry that his van was to be listed. If he had been, he would have been able to inform them of their error.

Instead, he learned about the listing in the media, an error SunLive has apologised to Ross for and clarified in a subsequent location of interest update.

'I had two parties cancel because of it which isn't the end of the world,” says Ross.

'But the kids miss out, which is not fair on them.

'MOH didn't even advise us we were named.”

Ross says he is still to hear from the Ministry about the error.

The Ministry passed the request to comment about the ice cream van mix-up to Toi Te Ora Public Health who did not comment on this specific issue.

CityFitness Gym in Fraser Cove. Image: Google Maps.

A bar in Tauranga was named as a close contact location on February 14 - with people who attended the bar on the evening of Saturday, February 5 into the early hours of Sunday, February 6 advised to self isolate.

SunLive understands that the event at the bar in question was a private function which used vaccination passes and a Covid tracker QR code policy.

The Ministry advice also stated for those present at the bar at the time to test immediately and on day five after exposure, despite it already being nine days since the event.

The owner of the bar in question did not want to comment any further when asked by SunLive.

SunLive approached the Ministry on this issue, who passed the query on to Toi Te Ora.

Toi Te Ora say exposure events are assessed on a case by case basis.

'These could include the number of people, the management of entrances and exits, the separation between different spaces, the extent to which people were mixing and what infection prevention controls were in place,” says Toi Te Ora medical officer of health Dr Jim Miller.

'This event was assessed by the team and it was determined that all attendees at the event were close contacts. To ensure that all those who attended had the appropriate health advice, a public notice of the event as a location of interest was required.”

However, SunLive is aware of another private event held in Tauranga on Friday, January 31, which was later deemed an exposure event. On this occasion, the Ministry did not list the event on their public listings.

A Ministry spokesperson says that on this occasion it was decided releasing further information 'would not contribute to the public health response” so, for privacy reasons, the event was not listed.

Another Tauranga business also took exception to details of a location of interest listing from January.

CityFitness Gym was named as a location of interest for January 24 and January 25.

But in a statement released shortly after being listed, CityFitness raised concerns over the time period of exposure and the lack of a risk assessment.

They were concerned that classifying all of those people in the gym at the time listed by the Ministry would 'cause the high majority of members and staff to self isolate unnecessarily.”

The Ministry also initially listed just one of the two exposure dates as linked to the Omicron outbreak in error, as both should have been.

That error was amended later the same day.