New Zealand has 67 new cases of Covid-19 - bringing the total number of cases to 1106. There are 13 people in hospital including three in ICU, one of whom is critical.
The Bulls Flying Doctor has flown all around New Zealand providing medical services over the past 30 years.
Now he's found himself doing the same in a worldwide pandemic.
Dr Dave Baldwin, who is based at the Bulls Medical Centre, got a phone call from an old friend, MedLab chiefexecutive Cynric Temple-Camp, on Friday afternoon asking him to help transport critical coronavirus samples to a laboratory in Christchurch.
Dr Dave Baldwin has been flying for over 30 years and used his expertise to get critical coronavirus samples to a lab. Photo / Supplied
Air New Zealand had cut flights and Temple-Camp said MedLab was stuck and did not know how it was going to get the samples down south.
Baldwin was more than happy to do it and due to his expertise of flying his Cessna light aircraft down to the South Island, he was the perfect fit.
On Saturday morning, Baldwin got clearance that his flight was essential and met Temple-Camp on the Palmerston North runway with about 120 test samples from the Whanganui, MidCentral and Tairawhiti District Health Boards.
He flew to an airfield just south of Rangiora where he met Temple-Camp's daughter, who collected the samples and took them to the Canterbury Health lab.
"It was a great feeling to get them there because it's my understanding as a frontline health practitioner that I have a lot of faith in the Government in the way they're handling it because they're being guided by health professionals and they want to do it based on the accurate stats, so getting the samples fast-tracked is very important," Baldwin said.
He flew again on Sunday with 120 or so more samples and Temple-Camp said the tests got there faster than they would have had Air NZ had delivered them.
Two of the tests from the samples tested positive for Covid-19.
Temple-Camp said getting the samples to the lab was vital because discovering two tests were positive meant they were able to notify both cases, make sure they were in isolation and begin contact tracing.
"David, he's a hero."
Dr Dave Baldwin flew to Rangiora to deliver the samples to get to Christchurch Health lab. Photo / Supplied
Baldwin said the situation has made him reflect on his 30 years of being in a general practice and in the early days he would ask his older clients what the best time of their life was to which they responded "World War II".
"I asked why and they said once they worked through the hardship there was the great feeling of camaraderie.
"That's the essence of what's going here because its really stressful for a lot of people and we feel it as front-row practitioners. But if people can just hang on and know that our Government and experts are really trying their hardest."
Baldwin said a positive outcome from the lockdown situation is a lot of people are doing things they never thought they would do in terms of helping others.
