Healthcare under traffic light orange

Southern District Health Board’s operations under the orange light of the Covid-19 Protection Framework (traffic light system) would look similar to alert level 2 for now, acting chief operations officer Hamish Brown said. As with alert level 2, visitors to health services are asked to stay away if they are sick, wear a mask, scan and maintain physical distancing. Patients and visitors will be able to enter DHB sites whether they are vaccinated or not, but all people visiting for businesses purposes must be vaccinated. Changes to operations could be implemented in the future depending on the number of Covid-19 cases in the community, which would include screening patients and visitors, Brown said. Preparation work is in progress across the Southern region, he said.