The Government is being accused by ACT of misleading New Zealanders over the country's COVID-19 PCR testing capacity, while the union that represents laboratory workers says some Kiwis' tests aren't being processed due to the overwhelming demand.
On January 25, days after New Zealand detected cases of Omicron in the community, associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall released a statement informing Kiwis that improvements to testing capacity would "see New Zealand well prepared for Omicron".
It asserted that New Zealand's PCR testing capacity had been increased from a maximum of 39,000 tests a day to a baseline of 58,000 tests.
But despite New Zealand not seeing anywhere near that many tests being taken each day - the most over the past week was 32,894 tests last Thursday - the Ministry of Health has been reporting increased pressure at the labs processing the samples, leading to delayed results.
As Newsroom reported on Tuesday, the discrepancy may be down to the lack of test 'pooling' occurring.
This is where a number of samples are tested at once and if the batch comes back positive, the individual samples are then retested to determine which one has COVID-19. Trouble is, when there is a high positivity rate - as New Zealand is currently seeing - pooling becomes "a waste of time", as APEX Union National Secretary Dr Deborah Powell put it to AM on Wednesday morning.
"If you think about it, we were doing eight in the one batch, and now we have to do every one. So we've lost seven eighths of our capacity and that's why we've reached as many as we can do," Dr Powell said.
She told AM the '58,000 tests' figure was down to pooling.
"The figures I saw earlier in the week out of one of our Auckland hospitals, there were thousands of tests which had been waiting over 48 hours to be processed and we're not going to get to them," Dr Powell said.
"That's the bottom line. We have reached capacity. The forecasting was optimistic and didn't really explain to people what pooling did and when pooling became no longer an option, what that would do to our capacity. That is the big thing that has happened. We can't pool anymore."
ACT leader David Seymour said the Government had "misled" Kiwis and said it should take "urgent steps" to approve more tests.
[Dr Ayesha Verrall] now needs to explain why we've already reached capacity when daily testing numbers are nowhere near that high," Seymour said.
"The Government needs to automatically approve Rapid Antigen Tests as available in similar jurisdictions and contract companies like Rako science.
"I'm hearing daily from people that their test results have been 'delayed 72 hours'. One person tested on the 12th of February told me this morning they still don't have their result. If they were infected, they'll have recovered now anyway."
Newshub has contacted both Dr Verrall and the Ministry of Health for comment, but the minister did tell Newsroom on Tuesday that pooling had been "particularly relevant in the early stages of the Omicron outbreak" and that "it has always been clear that as case numbers rise and positive rates increase, pooling becomes less useful".
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told Newsroom that due to the lack of pooling, there was a current baseline capacity of 31,000 PCR tests per day.
Dr Powell told AM labs are so constrained that some samples won't be tested.
"It's an escalating backlog as more and more tests come in… We are prioritising and we are getting the important tests out to people. So, you know, if you're presented to hospital, if you are an essential worker, these are being prioritised. But members of the public, I'm afraid the capacity won't allow everyone to just get a test when they want one."
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday was asked to confirm whether tests would have to be dumped due to a backlog down to the lack of capacity to process them.
"No, that's not what I have been advised. What I have been advised is that there is an ability to move through some of the backlog to prevent that from happening," Ardern replied.
She said New Zealand had "enough PCR capacity", but there are "a lot of tests being taken in one region".
To help relieve the pressure, rapid antigen tests (RATs) have been rolled out across Auckland community testing centres and Ardern expects to be used in GP clinics this week as well. RATs are also being provided to isolating critical workers who need to return to work.
In response to concern from the New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science (NZIMLS) about the stress on staff, Newshub put it to the Prime Minister on Monday that the testing regime in Auckland had collapsed. She didn't agree with that.
"We have the capacity to process 35,000 or more PCR tests on any given day. My recollection is that we processed somewhere in the order of 27,000 yesterday. The issue is we have a large number coming through in Auckland," Ardern said.
"That is why we have readied ourselves with rapid antigen tests. They are already in place in community testing stations and they are being used as of this week."
Dr Powell said lab workers are "exhausted" after a "long haul so far". There's still a long time ahead with the Omicron outbreak, she said.
"[Pooling] was a stopgap measure when we introduced it in the first place, and it worked well and gave us some relief. Now we've got RAT tests out there but the sheer numbers of positive tests coming through is, well, it's too many and we have to keep our lab services for the tests that need to be done."
On top of all the COVID tests, there are also tests for other illnesses that need to be processed. Dr Powell echoed calls from the Ministry of Health for people who aren't symptomatic with COVID-19 or haven't been directed to get a test to not go and get tested.
