Covid 19 coronavirus: Wait times at community testing centres ease as staff conduct thousands of swabs

People queuing for tests at Aucklands’ Henderson testing centre on Monday. Photo / Michael Craig

Thousands of people have been tested since Auckland went into lockdown and the rest of the country moved to alert level 2 – including more than 8600 community swabs carried out in Auckland alone yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the Northern Regional Health Co-ordination Centre (NRHCC) said 1133 community tests taken in Auckland as of 4pm today and 8638 were taken yesterday.

Auckland shifted into alert level 3 at 11.59pm on Sunday while the rest of the country moved to level 2.

The tests were taken across community testing centres, pop-up testing centres, GP clinics and urgent-care clinics and the figures don’t include testing at the border and in MIQ facilities.

“The demand for testing in Auckland has remained strong today, with wait times at a number of CTCs in Auckland, especially those closest to the locations of interest,” the NRHCC spokeswoman said.

Queues at Papaptoetoe High School dwindled this afternoon after some people reported waiting up to four hours to get tested.

Queues by early afternoon were about 20 carloads deep, compared to 400 when demand for tests peaked yesterday.

School principal Vaughan Couillault told the Herald the school community rallied to the challenge of getting tested, and members of the public had been patient.

Couillault said the school community was sympathetic to the sick student and her family.

Papatoetoe High School’s pop-up Covid-19 testing station on Monday, when long queues formed on the first day of the latest lockdown. Photo / Dean Purcell

“The Year 9 girl that goes to our school, she did everything right. It’s not her fault.”‘

And by 3pm Tuesday wait times had eased to less than an hour at the Ōtara centre, less than 30 minutes at the Wiri centre, and less than 10 minutes in Botany.

There were no reports of queues at any of Auckland’s other community testing centres, it said.

Two more community testing centres were opened in Auckland today, a pop-up centre at Kohuora Park in Papatoetoe and an additional centre in Takanini.

“We have boosted capacity at all of Auckland’s community testing centres, with additional staff and extended hours. This same testing capacity will remain in place tomorrow.”

Capacity will continue to be increased and hours at testing centres will be extended if necessary, the spokeswoman said.

Health officials said today in total more than 15,000 people were tested yesterday as they continue to look for any community transmission spread and the source of an Auckland community cases’ infections.

Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield thanked all those involved in the surge in testing – including staff at sites and GPs.

The agency stressed it was important the right people are able to get tested.

“Please don’t rush to a centre if you are well, or if you weren’t at one of the current locations of interest.”

The Ministry of Health said the total number of Covid-19 tests processed to date

was 1,595,770.