Who do we believe on ICU beds?

Newsroom reports:

As of 9.05am on Tuesday morning, there were 152 staffed intensive care beds across New Zealand (excluding Christchurch). All but four of them were full.

That’s according to a snapshot obtained by Newsroom of the Critical Health Resource Information System (CHRIS), which updates ICU capacity twice a day with submissions from each of the country’s public hospitals. It’s also much, much lower than the estimates provided by the Ministry of Health, which told Newsroom on Monday there were 297 staffed ICU beds in the public health system.

That is not a minor discrepancy. The Ministry pf Health is citing a number twice as large as the hospitals.