Those representing the country's medical lab workforce say the Health Ministry's estimates of lab capacity during the Omicron peak amounted to "misinformation".
The comments follow a review that found there were multiple deficiencies in the Ministry's planning.
The crux of the problem was it failed to accurately estimate lab capacity which led to a massive backlog of tests. The failure stemmed from an inability to account that pooling tests would become redundant as the rate of infections soared.
Pooling is when multiple tests are processed together, but it only works when infection is not widespread.
Lab scientists knew they'd be overwhelmed as Omicron took hold at the beginning of 2022. The president of the New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science, Terry Taylor, said the warning signs were well canvassed.
"It was 100 percent predictable. We'd been warning since early January about our lab capacity and the figures that were being trumpeted around just simply were not there," he said.
Those figures relate to January 25 this year, when Minister Ayesha Verrall announced we were "well prepared" for Omicron.
Testing capacity had "increased to 58,000 tests a day", and could surge to more than 77,000, she said.
But official information obtained by Newshub showed no one in the Minister's office checked the accuracy of the numbers.
The figures were repeated over, and over. At a press conference on January 25, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also hailed New Zealand's level of preparedness when it came to testing.
"We can do 60,000 tests a day," she said.
The messaging infuriated the frontline and Taylor has a message for the politicians and their advisers.
"Have a think about your frontline health professionals before you start making ridiculous assumptions of what their capability is," Taylor said.
The secretary of Apex, the union that represents lab workers, Dr Deborah Powell, agrees.
"The numbers that were being put out in public - it was misinformation and lab workers knew that. They were very upset."
She told Newshub it was disappointing.
"It makes my heart sink really because they worked so hard."
The Ministry's wrong assumptions led to a backlog of 32,000 tests. A review of the mistakes found:
- There was "inconsistency" in planning
- There was a "disconnect" between key groups
- Ministers and the Director-General were "unprepared" for the backlog, even though this was "to some degree predictable"
- Increasing positivity rates were "not fully appreciated" by the Ministry or "not effectively communicated" to decision-makers.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield accepted errors were made.
"It's clear from the findings that we could and should have done better on both estimating that capacity and communicating that nice and clearly."
Deborah Powell said the current mix of public and private labs isn't working, and the country would benefit from a more connected service.
"We need one national laboratory service in New Zealand. If we had that - we would not have had this problem with COVID capacity."
She urged the Ministry to "look outside your four walls" in the future and listen to the frontline - hard-working experts she described as the "hidden heroes".
The report made nine recommendations that the Ministry's working to implement, including a review of the operating model of laboratories. Any changes in that regard will rest with the newly formed Health New Zealand.
Terry Taylor said lessons must be learned going forward, especially in the face of new variants and further outbreaks.
He said from early on in the pandemic, he lobbied for an expert independent diagnostic lab specialist with the authority to direct and override existing financial and service barriers between the competing laboratory providers.
But his efforts went nowhere.
"The total reluctance to acknowledge that expert specialist medical scientists do understand more about national laboratory testing than politicians, health officials, medical doctors, mathematical modellers, and epidemiologists was obviously too bitter a pill to swallow," he said.
