Southern DHB Media Update - Tuesday 24 August 2021

SWABBING – Attributable Dr Susan Jack, Medical Officer of Health, Southern

Today more than 825 COVID-19 tests were taken by WellSouth staff and general practices around the district*.

The University of Otago pop up testing centre is continuing until Sunday, to ensure there is sufficient swabbing capacity in the system and that students continue to have easy access to testing.

*Please note testing data is preliminary and may vary from final data published by the Ministry of Health. It reflects recorded tests until 3pm.  

VACCINATION – Attributable Hamish Brown, Southern COVID-19 vaccine programme lead

The Southern vaccination programme has seen a huge response from the public, including essential workers, and has delivered over 6,000 doses for the second day in a row. To date, just over 213,000 doses been delivered across the Southern District.

CONTACT TRACING – Attributable Dr Susan Jack, Medical Officer of Health, Southern

Today we have 73 people documented as close contacts isolating in the Southern District.

While there are media reports of more Southern people than this having been at locations/events of interest, most of the discrepancy is that people need to call HealthLine to get put into the National Investigation and Tracing Centre if they were at a location of interest at the time of a COVID case.

We strongly encourage all people who know they were at a location of interest to call HealthLine as soon as possible and follow the guidance given.

Public Health South is contributing to the national response by managing over 400 close contacts, with more people being trained to increase that volume in coming days.