Dr Lucille Wilkinson, who heads the Department of Medicine, says the Northland DHB has been setting up its clinical response to ensure it is ready for for the potential for Covid-19 to change the way it works.
There were several aspects to a clinical response — being ready for an increase in the number of those needing hospitalisation, for a different type of workload and appropriate training for staff.
"We need to be ready for more patients with respiratory illness, more patients who need to be isolated from other patients, and more people who might need a higher level of care with severe respiratory illness," Dr Wilkinson said.
"This in turn means that we need training for our staff, particularly in using personal protection equipment and to understand what support patients might need if they become unwell. We need to be as ready as we can be, so that our staff have the ability to keep themselves and their patients safe.
"We have been preparing ever since we heard about this virus in January, thinking about what our response should be both locally and nationally. Once we got our first case in New Zealand, it was obvious that we needed to ramp that up more, in changing the way our hospital works.