The Government has relaxed its order for all 12,000 workers across the Ports of Auckland and Port of Tauranga to get tested for COVID-19.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health required all port staff - including any drivers and contractors who had visited the ports - to get tested by midnight on Monday.
Yet barely a quarter had undergone a test by the deadline, with testing only commencing for Port of Tauranga workers by midday on Monday at a dedicated pop-up centre.
The deadline has now been extended under a new COVID-19 Public Health Response Order, issued on Tuesday. The order narrows down the testing criteria for Ports of Auckland and Port of Tauranga staff. Going forward, only "higher risk" workers are required to get tested, meaning thousands of workers - including truck drivers - are now exempt.
During Monday's 1pm media briefing, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the ministry had attempted to "cast a wide net" to ensure the latest outbreak of community transmision hadn't been imported into Auckland via visiting vessels and crew.
Dr Bloomfield also revealed that a positive case linked to the Auckland cluster was a port worker, considered to be a close contact of a previously recorded case.
Speaking to The AM Show on Monday, Road Transport Forum chief executive Nick Leggett called Saturday's order "silly", claiming it had incited "chaos" at the sites.
Leggett said the order forced thousands of truck drivers to "scramble", noting that the sheer number of workers the Government's order applied to would overwhelm limited testing facilities.
"Why are these silly rules put in place at just short notice, forcing people to scramble?... You can imagine 12,000 or 15,000 descending on a testing station," he said.
"We can't test all the workers it seems - we can't test border workers, we can't test Air NZ staff working on international flights, yet all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we need to test 15,000 truck drivers in Tauranga and Auckland because they're in contact with the port... the testing facilities just don't exist at the moment."
Following the initial order, more than 1000 Ports of Auckland workers had been tested by 5pm on Sunday.
