East Coast Māori health workers were forced to turn away hundreds of Tairāwhiti whanaunga who had queued for hours for COVID-19 testing.
The staff were apologetic to their people as the ran out of testing supplies.
Ngāti Porou Hauora Primary Care Manager Bobbie Cameron says, “So the first day we had 66 swabs in the van thinking we could get through the day okay and we ran out so we had to turn whānau away.”
Mobile testing clinics conducted their operations earlier this week in Tikitiki, Te Araroa and Potaka the northernmost point of Ngāti Porou rohe.
On day two of their testing operations workers had seen numbers of whānau wanting checkups doubled. However, frontline workers only had 117 swabs available.
Tlab Gisborne Hospital relies on a Palmerston North medical manufacturer for their swabs. Their daily order of swabs is determined by how many people show up on the previous day.
As a consequence the suppliers are drastically increasing the amount of swabs held locally. So the increase distributed to the clinics on the East coast and the extra swabs will be available from tomorrow morning.
“I think they may have underestimated the connectivity of these small rural communities.”
“A lot of people are taking it seriously and are turning up. And sometimes they’re waiting up to two hours to be swabbed,” Cameron says.