Whānau Ora is giving daily saliva tests to their health providers to help prevent staff from spreading COVID-19 in the workplace.
While rapid antigen tests (RATs) have been the go-to tests, they're not able to pick up a positive COVID-19 case in the first three days, so Whānau Ora has opted for the saliva tests instead.
"We are doing this off the back of zero funding from the Government and zero policy from a government agency because we know it's the right thing to do," says Lance Norman, director of health at Whānau Ora.
That's because RAT tests are less accurate at detecting positive COVID infections early. And while they have access to PCR tests too, saliva tests are more cost-effective, non-invasive and painless, meaning they're better suited for children, vulnerable and disabled communities.
"The fact that I'm in west Auckland and that I'm going to have a pre-categoric test done today and I'm going to have the result in four hours on my phone, and yet in some parts of the country it's going to take four to five days," Norman says.
The scheme was piloted on Te Whānau o Waipareira's 400 staff, plus their whānau, daily.
The lab testing can be conducted either on-site or tests sent externally to their partner Rako Science.
"It's about winning that war of attrition that this surge is putting on people, so the ability to identify early and stop the spread and get people back to work," says Leon Grice, Rako Science director.
Whānau Ora has partnered up with Rako Science, a private company that has been providing saliva COVID-19 surveillance testing at scale to New Zealand workers, businesses and vulnerable communities. However, they are best-known for providing saliva tests for the New Zealand Olympic and Paralympic Teams for the Tokyo and Beijing Olympic Games.
Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust is one of many Māori education institutions currently struggling with the bureaucracy and paperwork involved in getting RAT tests. Trust chairperson Angus Hartley says he's now interested in saliva tests too.
"If we are able to fast test our people, it'll be a lot easier to protect our mokopuna in Kōhanga, if that's the case of protecting our whole whānau as well," he says.
Hartley goes on to say that the current system doesn't work for them as the trust has to register over 430 Kōhanga Reo and each of their employees (critical workers) through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment process, just to have access to RATs. He also says it’s not whānau-centric, only thinking about the individual employee (or critical worker), and does not include their whānau members.
Their current workforce is also an ageing workforce with kuia and kaumatua all working with under 5-year-olds who are unable to be vaccinated.
"We have the ability to go out to community locations, community centres, marae, kura, kohanga, test kaimahi, test whānau at those centres. I'm reducing the choke point and I'm going to you rather than 10,000 people come to me," Norman says.
The surveillance saliva testing is widely used overseas, but Whānau Ora's whānau-centric operating model is all homegrown. It will be rolled out to their 83 health providers and their communities.
Six months ago, the Ministry of Health's own COVID-19 Technical Advisory Group urged the Government to connect with innovators in the community as their COVID-19 testing needed to be more adaptable and their introduction of saliva and RATs had been relatively slow.
