A small amount of liquid in a plastic bottle sent to the New Zealand Herald has been secured by Auckland City Police after it arrived in a suspicious package this morning.
NZ Herald management implemented the appropriate processes around suspicious packages and called Police to attend the mail room at about 9.30am.
The package contained some documents and the small plastic bottle. One of the documents made mention of ebola. As a precaution, the bottle and its contents were secured by Police and transferred to ESR where it will be swabbed for DNA and checked for fingerprints before being sent to Melbourne for testing. Results are expected within days.
Police requested the assistance and advice of health officials who attended and assured the small number of staff who worked in the mail room that any risk of contamination from anything in the bottle was almost non-existent.
"Police are often called to deal with and investigate the origins and contents of suspicious packages," Detective Inspector Scott Beard said. The vast majority of them turn out to be benign but we don’t take any chances. This is no exception."