Covid tests adding to ED strain

Testing patients at most emergency departments for Covid is delaying their care and unnecessarily adding to clinicians’ workloads, a top ED doctor says, as hospitals around the country strain under a rising tide of illhealth and a growing list of surgeries.

Dr John Bonning, an emergency department physician and immediate past president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said people who tested positive with the virus after turning up to ED couldn’t be admitted to a ward, and then couldn’t get scans or other tests as soon as they normally would.

‘‘Somebody will come in with a broken leg or a heart attack, and you test them and they’re Covid positive – now they can’t go to the ward,’’ he said. ‘‘People who are Covid-positive [but are] completely asymptomatic get less care.’’

Measures to protect vulnerable patients, and separate infected people, should still stay in place, but blanket testing – especially of asymptomatic people – should be dropped as it sometimes caused more harm, including for children and babies, he said.

The testing was adding further blockage and strain to a system already groaning under unprecedented pressure, with ballooning numbers of people waiting more than 24 hours in busy EDs, and where ambulances have nowhere to offload patients.

He called for a change in perspective of the threat Covid posed to a highly vaccinated population, especially since most people didn’t fall very ill if infected. However, staff needed to continue to be careful, through washing hands and staying home if sick.

‘‘I do think we need to step away from that a little bit and make it about personal responsibility and of course, protecting vulnerable populations,’’ he said.

‘‘We’re a bit better at isolating people with respiratory complaints, and I think we need to design hospitals for that as well – so not to throw the whole baby out with the bathwater – but let’s just stop testing everybody, particularly asymptomatic people.’’

He said nurses were forced to stay away from work ‘‘with literally a little bit of a sniffle’’ which often reduced the number of beds a hospital could provide.

He said it was the right thing to go early and hard in 2020 but now ‘‘we’ve got a highly vaccinated population with a less serious virus’’.

New Zealand College of Emergency Nurses spokeswoman Sue Stebbeings agreed only patients with symptoms should be tested.

Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand was approached for comment but did not meet deadline.