The Delta outbreak exposed Andrew Little’s failure to resource ICUs, and now Omicron is exposing his failure to resource general hospital beds, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

“Newly released data shows that on 9 February 2022, general hospital ward beds across all hospitals in New Zealand were already at an average of 82 per cent occupancy. This was at a time when there was only 204 community cases and 16 in hospital.

“Whangarei Hospital had 100 per cent occupancy and hospitals in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Hawkes Bay, Palmerston North, Wairau, Waikato and Whanganui, were all at more than 90 per cent occupancy.

“We don’t have enough beds and we also don’t have enough nurses. The same data shows more than 2,000 nursing vacancies across the sector, including 400 vacancies at Auckland hospital alone.

“The combination of full hospitals, not enough nurses, Omicron starting to surge and winter fast approaching is a deadly mix.

“People with Omicron will be pushed out into an unprepared community and people waiting for surgery and cancer treatment will have their procedures cancelled.

“Andrew Little has not prepared the health system. What he has done is spend large on consultants and a health restructure instead of ICU beds and nurses.

“How many lives are going to be affected by Andrew Little’s constant poor decisions?”

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