New Zealand is ramping up it's capacity to test people for coronavirus Covid-19, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is urging clinicians to do so.
Ms Ardern told media today the ability to test had been growing day on day, and later this week will have the capacity for up to 1500 tests.
"If you believe you need to test, test. We have the capacity, we are continuing to build capacity, and now it's up to those health professionals on the ground to make those decisions and test," she said.
When asked if New Zealand had been testing enough up to this point, Ms Ardern said it was up to health professionals to make decisions to test.
"I'm not the doctor in the room," she said. "My job is to make sure that the capacity is there, it is. So now I encourage clinicians to make those calls."
However, her comments come after Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield on Sunday said it was important to be able to get test results back quickly and not "swamp our testing capacity with unnecessarily testing asymptomatic people".
"We will be testing people who have symptoms, we will not be testing people have have no symptoms and who might be anxious or concerned.
"We have plenty of testing capacity in New Zealand, however we need to ensure that it is used to identify cases and that we get those test results back quickly."
Mr Bloomfield said there had been delays in test results in Australia "in part because their testing has been overwhelmed with a lot of testing of asymptomatic people".
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