From the top of the country to bottom, we chart a week of Covid-19 testing by district health board area. David Williams reports.
Thanks came almost nine minutes into yesterday’s 1 o’clock briefing.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said community testing for Covid-19 remained a priority, and 35,376 tests were processed across the country the previous day.
“To everyone who’s turned out to be tested, thank you very much.”
Gone are the monstrous queues of last week, and wait times are shorter, as primary care providers bolstered Auckland’s capacity. There are 22 community testing centres around Tāmaki Makaurau, and 11 in Wellington.
Thanks must surely go to laboratory staff too, who are now processing tens of thousands of tests each day.
Ministry of Health data released to Newsroom show how Covid-19 testing has increased since Level 4 lockdown was announced, and how Auckland is, once again, doing the heavy lifting for the country.
Within two days of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announcing a nationwide Level 4 lockdown, processing within Auckland DHBs lifted from 2970 tests to 11,678.
(Confirmed Covid-19 cases increased from one, the 58-year-old Devonport tradie, to 148 yesterday.)
Across the country, tests increased from 5742 on Tuesday of last week to 26,859 last Thursday.
Last Friday, a surge was also apparent in the rest of the country. Processed tests from Canterbury DHB had lifted from 646 on Tuesday to 3604, while Bay of Plenty had rocketed from a trifling 211 to 1805.
Southern DHB experienced a similarly dizzying increase, from 349 tests to 1967 by last Friday, while Waikato bounced from 321 to 3021. Auckland’s DHBs, meanwhile, surged again, to 20,969 tests – more than half of all tests processed on Friday.
With the weekend came a lull in test processing – a reduction from 39,540 on Friday to 34,454 on Sunday.
On Monday, the decline continued, to 33,981 tests. Seventy-one percent of tests were processed from Auckland DHBs.
In all, 188,420 tests were processed over the week.
Laboratory test figures are coordinated nationally, and reported daily by the Ministry of Health. They won’t match DHB figures, the ministry warns, because they are based on when the sample is taken.
There are other caveats. Darryl Carpenter, the ministry’s group manager of Covid-19 immunisation, testing and supply, says the DHB of residence is based on a person’s national health index number.
“So if someone has moved DHB, but their information has not been updated, then the entry will be inaccurate. Additionally, testing numbers can change retrospectively if a person’s DHB of residence is updated or the status in the lab data changes.”
At yesterday’s media briefing, Newsroom’s Marc Daalder asked Bloomfield about the pressure on testing laboratories, and delays between testing and results. The Director-General said testing is prioritised for anyone who is a close contact or has been in a high-risk situation. Auckland has five invite-only testing stations for this very purpose.
“Those tests are expedited,” Bloomfield says. “Certainly with that high level of demand, at the moment the turnaround can be around 48 hours, and there are some that are just over 48 hours, but obviously the labs, both in Auckland and across New Zealand, are working together to make sure we are getting through any backlog.”
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said processing capacity was stretched across Auckland – the centre of the Delta outbreak – and all testing resources across the country were being used. The Government is in talks with universities about the possibility of using their laboratories, he said.
Carpenter, the Ministry of Health manager, says testing as many symptomatic individuals and contacts as possible helps determine the spread and the “edges” of the outbreak.
He points to comments from Bloomfield – that dealing with the Delta variant is like dealing with an entirely new virus.
“The greater transmissibility of the Delta variant means that the virus spreads faster. For this reason, we need to maintain a high level of daily testing to have confidence in our assessment of the outbreak.”
The ministry’s data reveal some of the lowest testing results over the last week have occurred in the South Island.
New Zealanders are being tested in record numbers, Carpenter says. But the Ministry of Health is urging caution, asking everyone to remain vigilant even in places that haven’t recorded a positive Covid-19 case in the current outbreak.
“In the 48 hours after Alert Level 4 was announced, thousands of people left Auckland to return home in different parts of the country,” Carpenter says.
Testing locations can be found at the Healthpoint website, while the Ministry of Health lists locations of interest.
Those who were at a location of interest, or who have cold and flu symptoms, should call Healthline: 0800 358 5453
