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Overview
This Covid QR Code quilt was gifted to Dr Ashley Bloomfield, Director-General of Health, when he left his position in July 2022. He was one of the key figures who shepherded New Zealand through the Covid-19 pandemic from early 2020 (his first Covid-related public announcement was on 27 January 2020).
The quilt was made as a wall hanging by quilter and textile artist Anne Adams for a Rose City Quilters (Palmerston North) challenge in 2022. Every member was given 25 random squares and challenged to make a quilt with them. Adams added dark coloured squares to her original 25 squares to form the QR code. ‘The QR code was from a simple image I found on Google. It didn't work!’
QR codes
QR location codes became hugely important tools during the pandemic to help track and trace people and manage transmission of Covid-19. When the government’s Alert Level system was introduced in March 2020, all businesses and workplaces were required to display a QR code poster, with unique codes provided by the Ministry of Health. They could be scanned via the NZ Covid Tracer mobile app (those without the relevant technology could manually sign in). The resulting network of posters across the country enabled people to create their own digital diary of all the places they had visited, and public transport they had used. If they tested positive for Covid-19, their digital diary became part of the contact-tracing process, and others who were at the same places at the same time could be alerted to the risk of exposure (they would be advised to get tested and self-isolate to break the chain of transmission).
Covid terms
Adams stitched words into the quilt as ‘the new vocabulary we have all acquired over covid times’: ‘Lockdown, mandate, vaccination, spread your legs, isolation, bubbles, + ve [covid positive], - ve [covid negative], 1st jab, mask, omicron, contacts, QR code, pm update, on-line learning, booster, coronavirus, 2nd jab, scan in, delta, covid 19 RAT, symptoms’, and ‘2020 / 2021 / 2022’ feature across the quilt.
References: Personal communication between Anne Adams and Te Papa curator Stephanie Gibson, 14 September 2022.