Workers at Auckland City Mission are preparing for a potential Omicron outbreak.
Auckland City Mission's Helen Robinson stands in front of a shelf of food parcels. Photo: RNZ Insight / Sarah Robson
Planning at the Mission includes being able to meet an expected swell in demand for its health and food services, and contingencies for reduced staffing.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just announced that the country will go into the red light Covid-19 setting at 11.59pm tonight. The government recommends that people prepare for Omicron spreading into the community by getting booster shots and purchasing essential supplies.
Staff are confident the Mission has sufficient stocks of food and household goods.
City Missioner Murray Edridge said their social supermarket is fully stocked at the moment and receiving new supplies most days.
"We're certainly preparing for a change in circumstances; the fact that our own resources might be challenged in terms of staff availability, but most importantly, what we might need to put in place for the people that we're serving."
The preparations are aimed at ensuring their main services can continue, and it can support the city's most vulnerable people in an outbreak.
This includes ensuring food will be available if supply chains are hampered, and contingency planning for staff shortages, with the expectation people may have to isolate.
Auckland City Mission's HomeGround Photo: Supplied
Missioner Helen Robinson said community health needs were also being planned for.
"We're really conscious that the people the Auckland City Mission works for and with are actually people whose health is often quite compromised anyway.
"So we gratefully have a health centre here called the Calder Medical Centre, and we're working hard there, obviously to give out vaccinations and boosters and really we're trying our best to access a significant supply of rapid antigen tests so that we can be doing that on a daily basis.
"The planning is complex, it's significant, and I think the one strength to our bow really is that this will be the third time that we are now responding to the reality of Covid in our midst," Robinson said.
Anyone who wants to support the Mission by donating money or food should check the Mission's website for information.