The Government needs to stop throwing Ashley Bloomfield under the bus and take responsibility for its failures to ensure New Zealand’s testing capacity was ready for the surge in Covid-19 cases, National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall has joined the conga lines of ministers throwing Dr Bloomfield under the bus for the testing shambles that is entirely of the Labour Government’s own making.

“The Government didn’t order enough rapid tests, early enough. That is why we are in this mess now, with people having to wait for hours to get a test and days to get a result.

“Just when we thought this Government couldn’t get any more arrogant and any less transparent, the Prime Minister and her ministers were conspicuously absent at the 1pm media conference yesterday and let Dr Bloomfield take all the heat for the testing shambles.

“It was obvious to many people for a long time that New Zealand would need rapid tests to deal with this phase of the pandemic. But Labour actually banned them for most of 2021 and didn’t bother ordering any until a couple of months ago – and even then, they didn’t order nearly enough.

“That is a failure by the Prime Minister and her health ministers, not Dr Bloomfield.

“New Zealand had the advantage of being able to see what worked and didn’t work in other countries. We should be ten steps ahead of Covid, but instead we’re ten steps behind because the Government failed to act quickly enough.

“The Government needs to stop blaming officials for their own incompetence and stop ducking for cover whenever the going gets tough.”