The Ministry of Health’s admission that it has a major backlog of tests will come as a surprise to no one and is emblematic of the shambles that is the Government’s testing regime, National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“For weeks the Government has been telling New Zealanders that there was capacity to process 38,000 tests per week, only for the Ministry of Health to revise that down to 31,000.

“It took a week of questioning by a journalist for the truth to finally be uncovered – that the Ministry had overestimated testing capacity and there were 32,000 tests yet to be processed after five days or more, with as many as 9000 tests being sent to Australia for processing.

“It’s just not good enough that it took so long to get answers about why people were having to wait days and days for their results. Today’s admission will be little comfort to the thousands of Kiwis still waiting for results and unable to get back to work or school.

“But it’s hardly a surprise, given the Government failed to order rapid antigen tests until the very end of last year – and even then, they didn’t order nearly enough.

“And they still haven’t contracted Rako Science to offer saliva-based PCR testing – it’s a no-brainer, but their refusal to make it part of our testing regime is preventing more Kiwis from getting tested.

“Just like the vaccine rollout, the Government has been far too slow on testing and far too slow to front up with answers.”