Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: Frustrations boil over at Avondale Covid testing station

Frustration boiled over at an Auckland Covid testing station this morning after accusations were thrown around that people had pushed in.

Traffic management staff at the Avondale testing centre threatened to call the police on people angry they had been pushed to the back of the queue after an hour-long wait in line.

It comes as people around the country have been forced to wait up to 11 hours to get their Covid, before being turned away, after the country went into lockdown last week.

Kiwis will find out at 4pm today about which, or all, areas will remain in the strict lockdown as the Government's testing stations remain under the pump.

Jackie, along with her son who was an Avondale College student, arrived at the centre at 7.30am for the pair's day five test.

After waiting an hour in a queue heading west towards the centre's Elm St entrance, Jackie - along with roughly 20 other cars - were told they could not enter the centre from that direction.

Normally, queues for the Avondale centre were lined up heading east along Rosebank Rd and Ash St.

Those who were told to leave then approached what looked to be an entry to the site on Ash St, where they were also denied entry by a traffic management staffer, as it was the site's exit.

At this point, Jackie said about four people exited their cars, frustrated at having been bumped to the back of the line.

Jackie said the staffer then told them he would call the police if they didn't return to their cars.

Now facing a potential 5-hour wait in a line of more than 200 cars, Jackie was frustrated her efforts to arrive early had been wasted.

"Someone else's confusion has caused a whole of angst," she said.

Some Aucklanders went out early today to avoid getting caught up in long queues.

Traffic stretched a few hundred metres from the Henderson site at Whānau House at 6.15am today and had snaked well into Railside Pl.

But while there were still queues, they varied in length depending on which part of the city people were in.

Queues at testing centres on the North Shore were at record lows this morning.

The Albany centre at North Harbour stadium - where a woman last week waited 11 hours only to be turned away - was quiet with the wait earlier around two hours.

The queue had also shortened at the Wairau Valley centre which had contained the queue for testing inside the Eventfinda Stadium car park.

However, in South Auckland, people faced a lengthy four-hour wait in the car at the Ōtara testing site at 9am.

#Update Ōtara Community Testing Centre 23/08/21 ☀️ 📍 Queue closed to free up the flow. 📍 The Centre will be open...

Posted by South Seas Healthcare on Sunday, August 22, 2021

Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall told TVNZ's Breakfast that 5 per cent of Auckland's population have been tested for Covid-19.

She said that was a higher percentage than what they had hoped for - of at least 1 per cent.

She added that contact tracers had managed to find 10,000 close contacts connected to locations of interest.

She acknowledged that "tens of thousands" of people had left Auckland before lockdown started.

"That's the level of risk we're dealing with there."

Covid-19 modeller Michael Plank told RNZ he expected to see 20 new cases per day, but there could be more given the large events that took place.

He said it would not be until the second half of this week before we started to see any sign that lockdown was having an impact on the spread.

It was "definitely good news" that there seemed to be one cluster only.

"We're not completely out of the woods yet in terms of another cluster being out there, people could still be in the incubation period," he said.

Delta had a "wide-ranging" incubation period.

He said it was possible that people were not yet sick but were still infectious.

He predicted that the level 4 lockdown would be at least another week.