Hospital laboratory workers are planning to strike this week after months of failed negotiations with their employer, but the national secretary of the NZ Resident Doctors Association and APEX Union says it won't impact testing for the coronavirus Covid-19.
Yesterday the Ministry of Health announced it was ramping up its testing efforts, able to process more than 1000 tests a day.
Dr Deborah Powell says hospitals are stretched to breaking point already, and the strike is one of the results of that.
"Our resources are being stretched because the demand from our population has risen so much… and unfortunately staffing levels have not kept up with demand," she told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning.
"We are stretched at the moment. There is genuine concern about how we're going to cope if we don't get this containment right of coronavirus, then people are starting to need to be hospitalised on top of a stretched workforce, and then there's the flu."
Director General of Public Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield gave an update on the Covid-19 situation in New Zealand. (Source: Other)
With the spotlight on Covid-19 and testing, Dr Powell says the workers have been "caught with timing".
Bargaining has been ongoing for nine months already and low-level strike action has taken place since October.
"But we are all on time constraints and we would prefer to have this settled now, we'd prefer to have had this settled before any impact of coronavirus kicks in," she says.
"When I talk about caring for the health workforce, I include stopping this cycle of frustrating bargaining that we've got into in health."
There are five cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand so far, all in Auckland.
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