Why weren’t they ready?

Messages preparing us for a return of community transmission of Covid-19 have been ramping up for at least a couple of weeks.

If we were supposed to be ready, the government and health officials should have been too.

Queues of up to seven hours for testing show they weren’t.

A woman and her nine-month-old baby waited over seven hours at a coronavirus testing station on Auckland’s North Shore. . . 

But cars began queueing at the College Rd station in Northcote before it opened at 9am – Katie Wahlman had to inch forward in the queue while breastfeeding her infant.

”We were advised to get tested by Healthline but many people have turned around and left due to the wait,” Whalman told Stuff. 

GPs aren’t testing so it’s a bottleneck here and there could be cases that are slipping through the cracks as this was not prepared for the turnout today. This is terrible.”

Christiaan Van nie Kerk waited over seven hours to be tested and urged organisers to arrange for better traffic management or add another testing site in the north Auckland. . . 

Short waits are acceptable, long ones are not, especially for people who aren’t feeling well.

The number of people wanting tests a few months ago should have prompted the Ministry of Health to be prepared for big numbers when news of community transmission broke.

This isn’t the only problem – there’s already a shortage of masks:

https://twitter.com/POLITIKwebsite/status/1293320902398971904

Is this going to be a repeat of the flu vaccine debacle when the PM and MOH kept telling us there were plenty when health professionals said there weren’t, and the latter have been proved right?

The latest lack of preparedness doesn’t give confidence that everything that could be done is being done.

The government keeps telling us the health response is their first priority. If that’s the case why weren’t they prepared for people wanting testing once community transmission was uncovered, especially when they were warning us it was inevitable?

Why aren’t there enough masks?

First time round they might have got away with the excuse of no rule book. That won’t work this time. They have had months to not only write the rules but ensure they’ve got everything in place to follow them.

If they can’t manage to cope with people wanting tests, how can we have confidence they’re  coping with anything else?