Taranaki residents invited to Covid-19 pop up testing clinic

The pop-up clinic will run in the New World carpark in New Plymouth on Friday afternoon.

The Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB) is holding a free community COVID-19 pop up testing clinic to help boost testing rates which are on the decline nationwide.

TDHB's Incident Management Team controller, Becky Jenkins, says testing remains an important part of our overall strategy to detect any community cases of COVID-19 as quickly as possible.

"We've seen a decrease in the number of people being tested. This could be due to lower rates of influenza-like illness following lockdown, school holidays, and even reluctance to have a test by some members of the public."

Becky says people don't need to have symptoms to be tested at the pop-up clinic.

"We hope the community pop up clinic will encourage people to come along and get tested even if they don't have symptoms. It's just good reassurance that we don't have community transmission, and that they're helping to keep friends, family and whānau safe."

The pop up clinic will be held on Friday, August 7 between 1-3pm in the New Plymouth New World car park. There will be several health professionals on hand for free testing, support and advice. They will be wearing personal protective equipment for health and safety.

Becky says the location is chosen to be easily accessible for people.

"We've chosen New World car park as a central location for people to easily access by car or foot. You don't have to be shopping at New World to get a test, simply drive or walk into the car park and one of our staff will help you get tested. We'll have seating for those who walk there".

She says Taranaki DHB also encourages people to use the NZ COVID Tracer app which has been updated to allow users to add manual entries to their digital diary. This means people are now able to maintain a complete and private record of all the places they've been and the people they've seen, even when there is no QR code available to scan.

"It's important we all get in the habit of using the Tracer app to keep track of our movements and try to prevent a COVID-19 resurgence."