Pharmacies are dealing with an increasing number of people with COVID-19 symptoms visiting stores in an attempt to get rapid antigen tests - and it's causing concern for workers.
The Omicron outbreak is spreading around the country with an all-time high of 3297 new community cases reported on Wednesday. As a result testing centres are overrun with the Ministry of Health urging people to only get tested if they need to.
On Wednesday the Ministry said a "significant number" of concerned people who don't need tests are turning up at centres.
It stressed people should only get tested if they have cold or flu symptoms, have been identified as a close contact of a case, or have been asked to get tested by a health official.
Pharmacies are also dealing with an increase of people seeking tests - even though most do not supply tests to the public, and those that do supply them under very strict criteria.
To make matters worse, symptomatic people are also showing up to pharmacies that aren't equipped with them.
Pharmacist Samantha Tibshraeny told AM it puts staff and customers at risk.
"This week we have had an increasing number of people coming into store with COVID like symptoms, specifically letting us know they have COVID symptoms and are seeking a RAT," Tibshraeny said.
She said pharmacies aren't equipped to deal with positive cases and aren't providing RATs to the general public yet.
"With the increased use of RATs at the moment I think people feel as though coming to the pharmacy to get a test is the right thing to do. So they are here in-store when they are symptomatic - this is not what we want people doing and I think the message needs to be really clear, if you are symptomatic you need to be going to a testing station or following the advice from Healthline.
"Pharmacies can only be selling RATs to businesses to use for their staff, so we are not giving any RATs to people who are symptomatic or are a close contact. Some pharmacies are offering a service where if you're unvaccinated and need to cross the border you can come in and get a supervised RAT onsite - that's a really small number of people. So pharmacies really only have tests available at the moment to businesses to purchase."
She said if symptomatic people continue to show up to pharmacies they may have to restrict access as they did during level 4 lockdowns - but they want to avoid that.
"We would just really like to make it clear to everyone involved, whether that's Government officials who are putting pharmacies up as collection points, we can't be supplying tests to symptomatic people, we are not geared up, we are not PPE ready for dealing with a huge influx of symptomatic people.
"We are trying to have this living with COVID approach, having our doors open... We really don't want to go back to that really strict screening at the door entry and we can do that provided we don't have high-risk people coming in."
The Ministry of Health website says anyone with COVID-19 symptoms should get tested immediately at a testing centre.
Common COVID symptoms include a new or worsening cough, sneezing and runny nose, fever, temporary loss of smell or altered sense of taste, sore throat and shortness of breath.
Local testing centres can be found here.
