Heart of the City CEO Viv Beck on how Auckland businesses are struggling. Video / Jed Bradley
OPINION:
This Government has a blind spot that threatens to undo all its good work on managing Covid-19 – it will not listen to business.
As Omicron takes its grip, that lack of ability to listen to valid solutions offered by business leaders is going to leave us high anddry when it comes to the testing required to manage the speed of this strain of the virus.
Already the Government's PCR testing is feeling the strain. It is inconceivable to many of us, given what we have watched happen as close as Australia, that these days have not been adequately planned for with various forms of rapid testing, including rapid antigen tests, (RATs) being widely available.
The Government is asking people to manage their own health. The only way they can do that is with fast access to testing with fast results.
Businesses cannot fulfill their health and safety obligations to their staff if they don't have fast access to testing with fast, accurate results.
A cobbled-together Government process that allegedly allows critical workers to get back to work quickly if they are exposed to a positive case is so convoluted it does not take into account the need for speed that the word "critical" would suggest.
A critical worker cannot have a pre-approved exemption to streamline the process.
They need to wait until they get a text message saying they are a close contact of someone who has tested positive to Covid-19. We already know there is some delay in this notification of close contacts.
Having already registered as a critical business, their employer can only then go through the Government system to get each, individual worker exempted to work, provided they are vaccinated and asymptomatic.
To cut a long story short, the worker then needs to take six pieces of approval and identification papers to pick up rapid antigen tests - if there is somewhere near them open at the time.
This is not the system we need. The Government has been told that and it has been offered much more effective solutions. But Wellington moves at its own glacial pace.
For the past two-plus years, we at Transporting New Zealand have explained to Government, over and over, how the supply chain works. As the words suggest, it's a chain. You take out a link and the chain no longer works. It is operated by some of the best logistics experts around.
We constantly offer that logistics expertise to Government. Like many in the business community, we are solutions-focused and we need to have fast, safe and effective solutions. We need drivers in trucks for our part of the supply chain to work.
We are also a safety-sensitive industry, so people get health and safety, their lives are ruled by it.
We have watched as Sir Ian Taylor - who was knighted for his services to broadcasting, business, and the community - has written prolifically in this publication, firing solution after solution to the Government around rapid testing to move the Covid-19 response along.
Sadly, we have also seen his many brilliant ideas and well-thought-out solutions met with a lukewarm reaction from Government. This has happened to the ideas of many other business leaders who have tried to help weather this pandemic not only from a public health perspective but from a much wider focus on the good of the nation as a whole with a well-functioning economy.
Nick Leggett. Photo / Janine Baalbergen, File
We fully support the solutions Taylor has offered, including asking the Government to look at Lucira Covid-19 test kits, which are accurate and provide a result in 30 minutes. Taylor has offered to make the necessary connections for the Government to get access to these kits, widely used in other countries including Canada and Israel. They are more comparable to a PCR test and are not a rapid antigen test.
To stay open, businesses need access to rapid testing to manage the health and wellbeing of their staff and customers - and not just ones the Government deems critical. We are already seeing the toll Covid-19 has taken on many businesses and we don't want to see any more go to the wall in 2022. It should be the year we kick Covid-19 for touch.
Businesses don't need Wellington officials to manage this for them – businesses have much better purchasing, logistics and distribution systems and skills they can call on. It is just unfortunate when they have used those skills to source rapid antigen tests, the Government has taken those test orders from them.
The Government needs to get out of the way and let businesses manage a fast and effective testing regime that will allow the country to keep moving. We are in year three, the heavy hand of Government needs to be loosened.
• Nick Leggett is chief executive of Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand.
