Covid 19 coronavirus: Bloomfield on border testing - 'There isn't a failure here'

The Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield has come to the defence of the Government's border testing, but does accept there may have been miscommunication between Jacinda Ardern and those at ground level.

Bloomfield repeated that the virus was tricky, and the virus was the problem, not people.

He was heartened by the number of people coming forward to be tested.

Asked about the failure to have regular testing of border-facing workers, he said no one had been misled and that testing was being rolled out for staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

"We were increasing the frequency of that testing."

He said the ministry was working closely with DHBs to ramp up testing.

Asked about people waiting up to five days for test results, Bloomfield said that tests were prioritised if they were more likely to be positive, and people were told about positive results "very quickly".

Bloomfield said he was giving the Health Minister and the Cabinet "very regular updates" about testing border-facing workers.

"I was checking every single day. There was clearly a dissonance between what the Prime Minister thought was happening and what was happening on the ground."

He said there may have been some miscommunication.

"We were under alert level 1 and we were going through a process of scaling up testing availability."

Asked about the Government's testing strategy - from June 23 - was for regular testing of asymptomatic border-facing workers, Bloomfield said: "We couldn't just flick a switch and do that overnight."

He said there had been no failure of testing of frontline border-facing workers, even though Health Minister Chris Hipkins has said that it wasn't happening as Cabinet expected, and Hipkins has taken responsibility for that.

Ardern has also said it wasn't happening as Cabinet had expected, though she said this morning it was unfair to assume that Bloomfield had misled her.

Bloomfield said no one had misled anyone, and that in his communications with ministers it was clear that Cabinet wanted regular testing of border-facing workers - which was being rolled out.

Asked about conflicting advice for testing Tauranga port workers, he said some of the workers will be deemed as higher risk than those, for example, simply driving truck drivers in and out of the port.