Covid 19 coronavirus: Bay of Plenty hospitals face some visitor restrictions

Visitor restictions apply to some wards in both Tauranga and Whakatāne hospitals. Photo / File

Outpatients should attend hospital appointments as normal but some restrictions on hospital visitors will apply as the Bay of Plenty goes into Alert Level 2.

The Bay of Plenty District Health Board confirmed in a release this afternoon that there would be no disruption to hospital services.

"Anyone with an Outpatients Appointment should attend as normal," said Bay of Plenty DHB incident controller Karen Smith.

"Entry to the hospitals is only through the front entrances and you will be asked to sign in using the Covid-19 QR Code or fill in a tracing form."

Hospital visitor policy

To keep hospital staff and patients safe, there are some visitor access restrictions to Tauranga and Whakatāne hospitals at Alert Level 2. These are as follows:

• Visitor hours 8am- 8pm
• All visitors to be health screened at the main entrance to ensure they are well
• All visitors to scan in or fill in contact tracing forms
• High-risk areas such as intensive care unit, high dependency unit, acute care unit and two approved visitors per patient per day at the mental health and addiction services
• Maternity will allow two support persons through labour and birth, one person following the birth and at the special care baby unit mothers and one nominated support person per day are allowed.
• All other hospital areas – one visitor at a time per patient, and a maximum of two visitors per day.

Restrictions will remain until Wednesday at midnight. A further announcement on the next steps will be made by then.

Additional Eastern Bay of Plenty testing stations has been set up offering additional testing capacity.

The stations are at Warren Park Car Park and Brabant St in Whakatāne from 2.30pm to 7.30pm from Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 4pm on Saturday.