Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): In the period ahead we are going to ask a tremendous amount of our health professionals. They are going to have put themselves literally on the front line of an outbreak the scale and length of which we know not yet but by the actions of the Government and the scenes that we have seen around the world they are going to be very very difficult times. I want to pay tribute to them because they are going to need to work incredibly long hours put aside their own affairs neglect their own families—some of whom will have their own needs—in order to care for those who will be unwell. And indeed given the Minister for Social Development and Minister of Revenue have also spoken those public sector staff are also going to be at the front line of the needs of New Zealanders as a consequence of this outbreak. We have been hearing the Government saying that they can't candy-coat this this is serious and yet we don't have an admission—yet—that a sustained community outbreak is coming. I think we need to be honest about that because it changes the plan that the Minister of Health talks about. He says we've got a plan we've had it since 6 January and yet these are conversations we weren't having only five or six days ago. Now I have been in contact with health professionals in Italy and in the United Kingdom and I will not elaborate on the things they have been telling me but in my long years in the health sector I have never heard the like. I ask this: are we really so naive as to think that those countries those advanced nations like South Korea Germany Japan Spain Italy and the United Kingdom were not hearing from the same public health experts that we are hearing from? And don't we have an opportunity to change our plan to be more nimble more proactive? The only difference I can see is that it started earlier and it started in the last month of winter.OK—we're now into autumn but I think we have a significant opportunity because the costs of not doing so could be as great as that which is being faced by those countries. And the Minister talks about the three things that we need to be doing: testing tracing and self-isolation. Well I want to focus on the first of those: testing—test test test. I was really disappointed in what I believe were constructive and important questions in question time today not being answered by the Minister. The simple question is this: at Logan Park High School in Dunedin are the 150 staff and students who are being tested there—all symptomatic or are some of them asymptomatic? If the answer to the question is the former then we should shut down the city and if the answer to the question is the latter—fantastic. What that means is we are going to get ahead of the curve because what we know from overseas experience is that asymptomatic carriers of the virus become symptomatic spreaders of the virus and if we know who those people are we can stop the spread. I was critical yesterday in congratulating the Government on the $500 million health package but worried that we're still nickel and diming this that there are mixed messages with our health professionals who are being told by the Prime Minister they have the discretion but being told by the Director-General of Health that they've got to stick to the programme which is the 14 March guidelines for testing. I applaud the Government's investments in things like primary care resources telehealth community-based assessment centres. These are really good ideas. I worry that the influenza vaccine ordering is not going to be enough and I know there's some more money in the future for that. So that should be brought forward. I also worry about our ICU capacity. But my simple message is this: let's not stick to a rigid set of criteria. We need to broaden the testing regime because when we know where it is we can know what to do about it. And actually we may be able to free people up if they test negative. They can go back to their lives back to their communities back to their schools now. The message has to be this to our health professionals: leave it to them. I agree with them on that but they must test test test.