New Zealand's hospital system would struggle if Aotearoa's Covid outbreak grew and became more like New South Wales, an expert here says.
Australasian College for Emergency Medicine president Dr John Bonning told Breakfast New Zealand's emergency medical departments have the capacity to deal with the current outbreak of Covid-19 in New Zealand, but said there's concerns if New Zealand's outbreak isn't controlled.
His comments come after Auckland hospitals issued a call for more ICU nurses to help them cope with the Covid-19 outbreak.
The call-out went out Tuesday night after the number of people in ICU across the region reached eight, with three of them on ventilators.
Bonning said New Zealand has the staff to cope currently but more training is being done to increase the country's pool of ICU medical staff.
"They're doing as much as they can to train further people - both doctors and nurses - in terms of waiting for an expansion of the requirement for intensive care staff should we get a significant wave as we're seeing in New South Wales," Bonning said.
"At the moment, we've got capacity but we're waiting for a further wave potentially."
It comes after a study by a Northland DHB emergency doctor highlighted significant gaps in the preparedness of emergency departments in New Zealand for Covid-19.
One of the biggest concerns senior medical officials surveyed nationwide had was lack of adequate staffing levels for the pandemic.
However, Bonning said the lockdowns have helped ease those concerns.
"There's several factors - in lockdown, early on in Level 4, presentations to hospital drop down to about two thirds of what we expect as with people staying at home there's a little bit less or fewer accidents," Bonning said.
"Illness still occurs of course and we get the elderly and children coming in, but a lot of the business as usual in the hospitals is not being undertaken which is a problem because that will come back to us.
"But we're in a pandemic where things change by the day and when we did the survey some months ago, there was a little bit more unexpected but now we've hit the ground fairly fast just over a fortnight ago when we had that first case and we've got a lot of experience from Australia."
Bonning said he speaks with Australian medical officials daily about what they're facing currently to further New Zealand's preparations for a similar event but with that comes concerns.
"We do worry about some of that unmet healthcare need and if we do get back to full business as usual, with our usual injuries and illnesses filling our emergency departments, and Covid on top of that, we'd be a bit worried."
Bonning added a New South Wales-level outbreak of the Covid would also put stress on ICUs in New Zealand at their current capacity.
"At the moment we have the capacity, we are prepared, we have the skills, we have the expertise but we had to do what we did [and go into lockdown]," Bonning said.
"New South Wales is in a very bad place."
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