HOSPITAL VISITING

All hospital visitors are recommended to wear a medical face mask. For more information about visiting: Visitors and family. See our COVID-19 page for general COVID-19 advice, detailed hospital visiting guidelines and COVID-19 tests.

See West Coast COVID-19 vaccination clinics for info on vaccinations link COVID-19 Vaccination • West Coast • Healthpoint

Last updated:
16 September 2022

Fewer visitor restrictions now apply

For visitors to all facilities (effective from and last updated on 16 September 2022)

Some visitor restrictions for all Te Whatu Ora Te Tai o Poutini West Coast health facilities remain in place, but we have relaxed others.

There is still a heightened risk to vulnerable people in hospital and so people must continue to wear a mask when visiting any of our facilities and follow other advice designed to keep patients, staff and other visitors safe.

Kia whakahaumaru te whānau, me ngā iwi katoa – this is to keep everybody safe:

  • Visitors or support people must not visit our facilities if they are unwell. Do not visit if you have recently tested positive for COVID-19 and haven’t completed your isolation period.
  • Patients in single rooms may have more than one visitor while patients in multi-bed rooms can have one visitor only per patient to ensure there is no overcrowding.
  • People can have one or two support people to accompany them to outpatients appointments.
  • Women in labour in a birthing suite, in Te Nīkau Hospital’s Maternity Ward and in Buller’s Kawatiri Maternity Unit can have the usual support people, subject to space, for the duration of their stay in our facilities.
  • Eating or drinking at the bedside is at the discretion of the Clinical Nurse Manager. Visitors must not eat or drink in multibed rooms because of the increased risk when multiple people remove their mask in the same space.
  • Hand sanitiser is available and must be used.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding as our staff work hard to protect and care for some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Mask wearing

  • Surgical/medical masks must be worn at all sites, except in counselling, mental health and addiction services where it’s on a case-by-case agreement with patients. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one. In higher-risk environments, people, including young children, may not be able to visit if they cannot wear a mask.
  • Any member of the public with a mask exemption is welcome in all our facilities when attending to receive health care and *treatment. Please show your mask exemption card and appointment letter to staff at the entrance. *Treatment includes coming into the Emergency Department, outpatient appointments, surgery or a procedure.

Visiting patients with COVID-19

  • People are able to visit patients who have COVID-19 but they must wear an N95 mask – this will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Other methods of communication will be facilitated e.g. phone, Facetime, Zoom, WhatsApp etc where visits aren’t possible.

You must NOT visit our facilities if you

  • are COVID-19 positive
  • are unwell. Please stay home if you have a tummy bug or cold or flu/COVID-19-like symptoms (even if you’ve tested negative for COVID-19).

Te Whatu Ora West Coast Aged Residential Care facilities

Visitors are welcome at our Aged Care Residential facilities, subject to the space available. All visitors must wear a surgical mask.

More COVID-19 information

COVID-19 vaccination programme roll-out to commence on the Coast next week

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Friday 9 April 2021Health news2 minutes to read

MEDIA RELEASE

8 April 2021

COVID-19 vaccination programme roll-out to commence on the Coast next week

Please attribute the following to Ralph La Salle, Acting Executive Director Planning, Funding and Decision Support, West Coast DHB: 

West Coast DHB will be commencing the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme across the Coast starting next week.

We have established a fixed vaccination clinic in the Community Services building on the Te Nīkau Hospital & Health Centre campus in Greymouth and once the programme is underway we will continue to roll it out to other locations as planning and available resources allow.

At this stage, we anticipate that vaccines will be available in Westport in late-April and across the rest of the Coast in early May. In consideration of the rural nature of the Coast, our COVID-19 vaccine roll-out plan is based on optimising the number of people vaccinated, not the number of vaccination clinics.

The initial roll-out of the vaccine will be to frontline health workforce interacting with patients, frontline health workforce supporting people in high-risk place and at-risk people living in high-risk settings. We expect to initially vaccinate around 2,500 ‘tier 2’ people and approximately 24,000 eligible Coasters as part of our ‘tier 3 & 4’ roll-out.

As the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine requires two doses 21 days apart, we need about 53,000 individual vaccines to complete our vaccination programme. We are currently finalising our appointment booking system which will assist us in determining the number of vaccines required at each stage of the programme.

On advice from the Ministry of Health, we are working to align our COVID-19 vaccine roll-out programme with our annual influenza vaccine programme which is focused on immunising as many people aged 65 and over from 14 April so they can access the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them.

We will provide further details shortly outlining when and where the COVID-19 vaccine will be available to the wider public. To be eligible, you need to be 16 years of age or older and we encourage anyone who is not registered with a general practice to do so.

There is plenty of vaccine for everyone, so no-one will miss out. Your patience is appreciated.

More information about getting the COVID-19 vaccine is available on the MoH website: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-getting-vaccine 

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Page last updated: 9 April 2021

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