Recruitment drive for Healthline callers

Healthline is recruiting for hundreds of callers to staff its Covid lines while the Delta outbreak snowballs and as more than 14,000 people are identified as close contacts.

In last year’s community outbreak, some faced hours-long waits for information while many simply hung up while waiting to speak to someone.

But Andrew Slater, chief executive of Whakarongorau Aotearoa, which is contracted by the Ministry of Health to run Healthline, said it was prepared and that everyone self-isolating would get their well-being checks.

‘‘I am confident because we have been activating our surge processes ... we will be able to deliver those check-ins of those people over the 14-day period,’’ he said.

‘‘The people are checked in via email and phone. We won’t be calling every single one of them every day, but we will be checking in on them over the 14-day period.’’

The snap decision to move to level 4 on August 17 saw an increase of calls to the Covid Healthline which continued to rise as more than 400 locations of interest were identified by yesterday.

But as many as 502 people had been taken from a reserve pool of 2500 staff for full training on Covid-19 calls.

Whakarongorau Aotearoa was now looking to replenish that pool as part of its surge plan, Slater said.

Healthline, the place to call if people think they have come into contact with the virus or need advice, runs three Covid lines. One gives information and registers people who were at locations of interest and need to self-isolate, another makes the well-being calls and the third gives advice and helps people book their vaccination appointment.

‘‘Across all of those services we have 2500 staff, and then we have another pool of 2500 people who have been through some of our recruitment processes, some of our training, and are ready to be trained up at any point in time,’’ Slater said.

New recruits consisted of former travel agents or hospitality workers. They only need a headset and fibre or broadband internet connection to apply, are trained and are then supervised for a week. All staff were able to transfer a caller to 111 in the event of an emergency, or bring a nurse onto a call.

The line was always susceptible to high waves of volume as more locations of interest were reported, he said.