"What is clear is that an incursion of the Delta variant will require a swift and forceful response, and we are ensuring we are prepared for that," White said.
The ministry's national PPE supply chain currently held close to 17 million N95/P2 particulate respirators, 285 million medical masks, 18 million isolation gowns, 1.7 million face shields and 280 million nitrile gloves.
ProCare's associate nursing director and head of clinical advisory services, Anna Wright, said with the significant spread of the Delta variant in Australia it was prudent for New Zealand to increase its level of preparedness.
"This is good proactive crisis management from the ministry, and will hopefully ensure that we won't be short of PPE should an issue arise at some point down the track," Wright said.
ProCare is a Auckland-based Primary Health Organisation (PHO), which meant it was funded by district health boards and was responsible for ensuring essential general practices were able to provide adequate care to their community.
A spokeswoman from another PHO, Alliance Health Plus, said all medical clinics were instructed by the ministry to ensure they held one to two weeks' worth stock in case of alert level changes.
"Clinics have been requested to respond directly to the ministry with their PPE stock levels and are advised to review and order their PPE stock weekly," she said.
None of the Auckland PHOs contacted by the Herald were aware of any problems or delays in accessing PPE supply via the Ministry of Health's national network, OneLink.
District health boards reported holding varying levels of PPE, with Waikato stocking at least six weeks, Taranaki two weeks and Hauora Tairawhti 10 weeks.
Taranaki DHB's chief operating officer Gillian Campbell said: "Our DHB had experienced some communication issues and delays with PPE stock, but work closely with the ministry to mitigate these."
A Lakes DHB spokeswoman said: "We work on trying to have 2-4 weeks' supply of PPE on hand, to provide a buffer to cover outbreaks."
Other DHBs - such as Northland, Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waitematā, Wairarapa, Bay of Plenty, Hawke's Bay, MidCentral and Southern - wouldn't disclose specifically how much PPE stock they had but said they had an adequate supply and resurgence plans were in place.
The Canterbury, Whanganui, Hutt Valley and Capital and Coast DHBs responded to the Herald's request about PPE levels by saying the information sought needed to be processed via the Official Information Act, which meant it could take 20 working days.
Nelson Marlborough didn't respond to the Herald within a two-day timeframe.
The Government on Wednesday announced it would plunge the country into a "swift and severe" lockdown if even a handful of cases of the virus were detected in the community.
College of General Practitioners medical director Dr Bryan Betty responded by saying an Australia-like outbreak of Delta would overwhelm the healthcare system very quickly.
"We couldn't afford a situation in New Zealand to have it out of control in the community because it would risk collapsing or compromising our health system," Betty said.
And earlier this week, Sir David Skegg's report revealed our country had the second-fewest intensive care beds per capita in the OECD.
College of Intensive Care Medicine chairman and Hutt Hospital ICU director, Dr Andrew Stapleton, echoed these concerns, saying there were not enough beds to cope with even a modest-sized outbreak - despite the ability to scale-up capacity.
This was "because hospitals are ageing, and because our resilience to a pandemic situation is poor, because of the design of elderly hospitals with poor ventilation of wards, inadequate numbers of negative pressure rooms", Stapleton said.
The real pinch point was the lack of ICU nurses, Stapleton said.
"One thing that would be useful [would be] to make sure that we hold on to the staff that we have got.
"Many of whom come from abroad, and reducing bureaucratic barriers such as visas to these staff having to leave the country - that would be a quick win."
Stapleton said he understood Cabinet was looking into this.
As with some other DHBs, Hawke's Bay said it had the ability to convert its endoscopy unit to an ICU ward, which would create an additional six beds, giving it ICU capacity of 19 beds.
As with other DHBs, the Waikato District Health Board said it was in the process of recruiting additional ICU staff but if there was an urgent need, staff would be redeployed from other departments.
On Friday, Ministry of Health officials shut down rumours of an impending Covid lockdown, saying there were no community cases of Covid-19 or any imminent lockdowns.
Healthline had been reporting that people were calling and asking about rumours of lockdowns.
"None of the reported rumours are true," the ministry said in a statement.
