Five Covid testing stations will be open across Northland between 10am and 2pm this long weekend.
Photo / Tania Whyte
Five Covid testing stations will be open across Northland between 10am and 2pm this long weekend.
Photo / Tania Whyte
Covid testing stations will be open across Northland this long weekend and the Government said services would be scaled-up if required, in light of thousands of visitors visiting from outside the region.
Only the testing stations on Winger Cres in Kamo and the one at Ruakākā Race Course were slated to open today but the Northland District Health Board (NDHB) confirmed testing at those venues would be available on all three days over the long weekend.
Kaitaia Hospital, Dargaville Hospital, and Turner Centre in Kerikeri will also do tests today, tomorrow and on Monday.
All five testing stations will be open from 10am to 2pm.
The Tai Tokerau Border Control, which set up a Covid information checkpoint just south of Kawakawa on Thursday, raised concerns about an absence of Covid testing stations north of Whangārei over the long weekend.
After five hectic days of testing across Northland and Auckland, health authorities scrambled to find evidence the virus has spread in communities.
So far all positive cases, a 56-year-old Northland woman and an Ōrewa man in his 40s and his preschooler daughter, have been scientifically linked with a fellow returnee staying in managed isolation at Auckland's Pullman hotel managed isolation facility.
There have been 29 notified cases in Northland since the outbreak early last year and the recent case has now recovered.
Figures from the Northland DHB show about 1900 people were tested in the region on Monday — the highest number per day ever— the day after the woman, who lives south of Whangārei, tested positive.
There have been 3663 tests done across Northland, excluding those at Mangawhai Domain, since last Sunday - 2 per cent of Northland's population - with no further positive tests.
Of those, 82 per cent of the tests were done at community based testing centres and mobile clinics.
Since the deluge of people at testing stations across Northland early this week, there has been a significant decline in numbers as people got the message that only those who presented with symptoms or were close contacts of infected cases needed to be tested.
Just 160 tests were done in Northland on Thursday.
The Kamo and Pohe Island testing stations were virtually empty yesterday.
Covid testing station in Kamo empty of cars, a far cry from early this week when people queued up for hours to get tested.
Photo / Tania Whyte
More than 38,000 Covid tests were done throughout New Zealand over the past eight days.
The level of community testing with no new cases provided reassurance for Aucklanders wanting to head away for the long weekend provided they followed the general public health advice - use the Covid Tracer app, stay home, and get a test if sick, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said.
"There is no reason why people's travel plans should change," he said.
The Ministry of Health is unable to provide regional data on the use of the Covid tracer app due to the way analytic reporting information is anonymised.
Nationally, 158,388,381 had scanned the app but that increased to 162,282,854 yesterday. An additional 40,000 people had registered the Covid tracer app since Sunday.
