North Shore Hospital is still operating under strict lockdown rules, turning away new patients from its emergency department with many staff isolating after potentially being exposed to a Covid-19 case.
As many as 120 staff have been stood down for testing after a young man who was treated at the hospital prior to lockdown is confirmed to have the Delta strain of the virus.
More than 100 patients were in the affected areas of the hospital at the same time as the positive case.
Waitematā DHB anaesthetist Dr Julian Fuller told Checkpoint the shortage of nurses around Auckland currently makes the situation difficult.
"Three cases of Covid-19 in three DHBs, and staff being down because they're either close or casual-plus contacts, it's very difficult," he said.
"Certainly at our DHB the silver lining here is that because all elective surgeries have been cancelled, we are actually doing as much acute surgery as possible, and the cancer surgery.
"And therefore probably getting through a lot more cases than we'd usually get through on a day to day basis. So that's actually good news.
"There's no doubt at all that at the moment we don't have a a major Covid-19 problem, but if this Covid-19 really takes off like it did 17 months ago, we'll have a huge problem."
The main problem would be not having enough people to run ICU, which needs skilled staff.
In other good news, Dr Fuller said he was told today about 88 percent of all medical staff had been vaccinated for Covid-19.
"That's fantastic. It takes a lot of the worry out of people who have to work and may pick up Covid-19, so that's good. Be nice if we can get the other 12 percent now."
Dr Fuller clarified that North Shore Hospital is not fully closed, just the emergency department.
"The rest of the hospital is as normal for Covid-19. In other words we're doing all our acute work in the hospital that needs to be done, our cancer work.
"And the ED we're hoping after a deep clean to actually have it open as soon as we can. I'm not quite sure whether that will be today or tomorrow."
Of those in the hospital who were potentially exposed to the positive case, 29 have been isolated and tested, he said.
"We're turning around Covid-19 tests in the hospital in 90 minutes, so we have a very good idea very quickly who's actually in any danger at all of being infected.
"The other 78 were discharged and are self isolating at home."
Dr Fuller said the rules for close contacts and casual-plus contacts to isolate may not be workable for fully vaccinated medical staff.
"When we have vaccinated staff who are essential workers, we think that's going to just not help run any DHB where too many staff are going to be sent home to quarantine for a minimum five days if you're a casual-plus contact.
"The consequences will be that there won't be enough nursing staff on-site to run the hospital, and I think that would probably be something I'm sure that will be looked at very soon, so that we can make sure we're adequately staffed.
"At the moment we're looking at 30 direct contact medical staff or healthcare staff, with the one patient who was at North Shore on Tuesday.
"That's reasonable enough for them to isolate at home. But then there's another another 90-odd staff, who are sort of casual-plus contacts, and it's difficult to know whether or not it's reasonable for them to all be sent home for two weeks.
"The same as if you're in a supermarket at the same time as someone who later on becomes positive. It's difficult to say that everyone should go home for two weeks."
