NZ police were sent to the Auckland office of the NZ Herald after they were alerted to the presence of the package which reportedly claimed to be from a “jihadist group” and to hold the Ebola virus.
Herald owner NZME. said: “An unaddressed package was sent to the New Zealand Herald offices in Auckland today. Protocol was followed for a matter such as this and it is now a police matter.”
Detective Inspector Scott Beard said the package has=d been secured and sent to forensic scientists at Environmental Science and Research (ESR).
There it will be swabbed for DNA and checked for fingerprints before being sent to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory for testing. Results are expected within a few days.
“Police are often called to deal with and investigate the origins and contents of suspicious packages,” Det Insp Beard said. “The vast majority of them turn out to be benign but we don’t take any chances. This is no exception.”
Det Insp Beard said health officials assured the small number of staff in the mailroom that the risk of contamination from anything in the bottle was almost non-existent.
Health Minister Jonathan Coleman said in a statement that there was no evidence that New Zealand had a suspected Ebola case, and that nobody was being treated for Ebola in any New Zealand hospital