Emergency doctors throughout the country have been surveyed about how prepared they feel their respective hospitals ED facilities are equipped to cope. The results make for grim reading with specialists highlighting significant and worrying gaps in hospitals' ability to cope with the spread of infection.
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The survey was carried out by Dr Michael Howard - he's an emergency consultant at Whangarei Hospital and has a PhD in immunology and microbiology. With hospitals and ICU wards in Auckland already busy with pandemic patients, and now positive cases in Waikato and Whangarei - Dr Howard says there is cause for concern.
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