Covid 19 coronavirus: Waikato DHB increases thousands of tests for Covid-19 in Countdown supermarkets while recording first death

Waikato DHB has rapidly increased its Covid-19 testing capacity to 800 samples per day, as the region today recorded its first death from the virus.

The DHB region today tested its 7,000th sample of Covid-19 as they implemented Community Based Assessment Centers (CBACs) at 10 locations in key areas where a group has been found.

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DHB quickly went from 20 tests per day to over 500, with a capacity of up to 800 per day if needed in its 420,000 population.

“Developing and implementing a new test method involves a lot of validation to ensure that patients receive high-quality results. The laboratory team has worked tirelessly to make the tests work,” said Kay Stockman, laboratory manager at Waikato DHB .

“This has been an unprecedented increase in our workload in a short period of time.”

Today was the first day since the initial week of Covid-19 was recorded in the New Zealand population that the number of new positive cases was in the single digits.

Eight new cases of Covid-19 were recorded today, but also two deaths, including a man in his 90s who died yesterday at Waikato Hospital.

He was admitted on Saturday night “very bad”. His infection was linked to a previously known and reported Matamata group.

Altogether, there have been 1,409 cases of coronavirus in New Zealand. Fourteen people are in the hospital, three in the ICU with two in critical condition.

DHB established five emerging CBACs in Waikato Countdown supermarkets on Thursday and Friday of this week in areas where Covid-19 cases had been confirmed.

“They support random testing of asymptomatic individuals to provide the Ministry of Health with data that provides greater confidence in the overall image of Covid-19 in our communities and in New Zealand in general,” Waikato DHB said in a statement.

“Supermarkets were selected as the place we are most likely to find people during the shutdown and Countdown is supporting the activity.”

Waikato DHB said it had encouraged residents to visit CBACs and has recorded one of the highest test volumes in the country with nearly 7,000 tests completed to date.

This equates to 11,900 tests per million population, well above the national rate of 8881 tests per million.

Waikato DHB’s CBACs have been testing more than 80 percent of people showing up for evaluation, following the latest Covid-19 national case definition update.

A complete list of CBACs in Waikato is available here.

• Covid19.govt.nz – The official government Covid-19 advisory website