Health Minister warns of potential Covid-19 processing delay amid high testing volumes

August 16, 2020

Chris Hipkins said positive results are reported first and promptly, however.

Health Minister Chris Hipkins has warned of a potential delay in the processing of Covid-19 tests amid high testing volumes. 

At the daily briefing this afternoon, Mr Hipkins said the "high volume of testing we are seeing is slowing down the processing". 

"It means that the usual 24-hour time frame for turnaround, in some cases, is extended to 48 hours," he said. 

Mr Hipkins said the delay could also be attributed to "other elements in the process," including the reporting of the test results back to primary care as well as the patient. 

He stressed, however, that "positive results are reported first and promptly".

"Patients who get a positive result will hear back quickly," he said. "High-risk swabs are also being processed as a matter of priority to ensure that they are at the front of the queue." 

It comes as it was today confirmed that there are 13 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.

Twelve of those cases are in the community, and one is a recent arrival in managed isolation.

Dr Bloomfield said all the new community cases appear to be connected to the first cool store cluster as "close contacts" of already-existing cases.

Two of the new cases are household contacts of the Mt Wellington GP, whose case is still under investigation.

Dr Bloomfield said initial investigations into the new cases have led them to believe none of them have left the Auckland region recently.

Dr Bloomfield added there are currently three people in hospital - two in a Auckland City Hospital and one in Middlemore. The trio are made up of the previously reported case in hospital, a case which has been transferred from a quarantine facility overnight and one of the newly-reported cases.

The new case in managed isolation is a child who arrived in New Zealand from Afghanistan on August 3 via Dubai.

The child tested negative on their approximate day three test but returned a positive result with their day 12 test. They have been transferred to the Auckland quarantine facility.

The new cases bring New Zealand's total number of active cases to 69.

New Zealand's total number of confirmed cases is 1271.

23,682 tests were carried out yesterday, taking New Zealand's total to 571,942.

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