Demand for health services is expected to surge as Tairawhiti emerges from the Covid-19 lockdown, district health board chief executive Jim Green says.
Gisborne Hospital services are being widened, in line with reduced restrictions under alert level 3. Photo: Supplied / Gisborne Herald
"We do believe there will be a surge in demand from this week as we come out of alert level 4 and more people feel confident about coming back into the health system," Green told a Hauora Tairawhiti board meeting this morning.
Gisborne Hospital, which has 108 beds, was just 25 percent full over the weekend.
But from today, in line with the lessening of restrictions under alert level 3, hospital services would be widened, Green said.
Waiting lists were reviewed several weeks ago to ensure patients who needed hospital care during the lockdown received it, he said.
However, it was anticipated that some patients' conditions would have deteriorated over the past four weeks.
The DHB was advising people to keep in contact with their GPs, who could update the DHB on the urgency of their patients' planned care.
With lower testing rates than most DHBs, Hauora Tairawhiti was asked by the Ministry of Health to ramp up its testing for Covid-19 during the lockdown.
Mobile clinics were introduced throughout the district last week for anyone who wanted to be tested for the virus, on top of the region's three community-based assessment centres.
"We have deliberately gone out to our community to find the virus and have not found it whatsoever," Green said.
About 1800 people in the region had been swabbed for Covid-19, or about 3.6 percent of the area's population.
Just three of those people had tested positive for the virus. The district had a fourth "probable" case but no current cases.
More than half of those tested for Covid-19 in Tairawhiti were Māori, Green said.
Community testing would be scaled back from next week, but people with respiratory symptoms were urged to continue seeking health advice.
The scaling back of testing reflected the fact there was no evidence of community transmission of Covid-19 in either Tairawhiti or New Zealand.
Only those with respiratory symptoms would be tested for Covid-19 at community-based assessment centres from now on, Green said.
Green said outpatient services would resume in various ways under alert level 3, as would immediate responses to GP referrals for specialist treatment.
Phone or video consultations would be available, as they had been during the lockdown.
People who required face-to-face appointments would need to follow social distancing protocols at the hospital.
Under the lockdown, non-deferrable cancer treatment continued to take place, but joint replacements were on hold until alert level 2, Green said.
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