The testing debacle

Newsroom reports:

A backlog in Covid-19 PCR testing which led to the country’s systems falling over should have been predicted and prevented by health officials, an independent review has concluded.

Poor communication, data limitations and a failure to learn from international experiences instead led to complacency and meant the country’s laboratories buckled under the strain of requests.

In March, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield admitted the ministry had overestimated the number of Covid-19 PCR tests the country’s laboratories could process as the virus took off in the community.

The revelation came as Kiwis waited upwards of a week for test results and health experts warned of laboratories reaching a crisis point, while months earlier one of the Government’s own groups had raised red flags.

You can forgive mistakes when they were not predictable. But when people had been warning about the problem for months and months, you are less inclined to forgive.

“While modelling was initiated in late January 2022, it appears that positivity rates were used to forecast demand only and were not used to forecast capacity or the point when pooling of samples is no longer viable,” the report says.

“Even then, the positivity rates used in the modelling are significantly understated and do not reflect the messaging from laboratories.”

With other countries having similarly faced difficulties with PCR testing in the face of Omicron, opportunities to learn from international experience were “substantial”.

“It is not apparent how these insights were incorporated into testing modelling, planning, or reporting.”

Saying “it is not apparent” is diplomatic speak for “They did not”