Judith Collins has called gaps in Covid-19 border staff testing an "absolute failure", adding the New Zealand public "have not been told the truth".
This morning Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said they were told "there was some reluctance from staff ... and I say that not to place blame anywhere" on testing of frontline staff after it was revealed they were not being tested weekly.
More than 60 per cent of staff had never been tested.
However, Ms Collins pushed back, saying staff "have contacted us to let us know they were not refusing to have tests, that they were in fact not offered tests and even some people have contacted us to tell us they asked for tests and were refused them because they were asymptomatic".
"That is entirely different from what the Government told us for the last two months."
"I've had a couple of people personally come to me... about the fact they asked to have tests and were refused them. Particularly the weekly tests, they were expecting those."
She said one staff member was from the Jet Park Hotel - where people with and suspected of having coronavirus are sent - and one from a Hamilton hotel.
Ms Collins also said of the most recent community-based outbreak - "It has to have come in from the border somewhere, either a sea border or air border."
"The fact they don't know is also concerning."
Ms Ardern told TVNZ1's Breakfast today that there had been gaps in border testing.
"One of the concerns here, and we're seeing this in the reaction to Covid, that some people who are ill, the way that some people are being treated, and this is one of the things I'll say, if we want to have a system where people openly get tested and aren't afraid to, where people are supported if they are found to be unwell, we really have to make sure that people don't feel that they're vilified or risk losing their job if they have Covid."
Yesterday, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said he did not believe there had been a failure at the border.
"Our border systems we have been continually strengthening; we have added in the testing of workforces which was being scaled up as part of belt and braces."
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