Covid-19
This information is effective from 5 December 2023 and was last updated 10am on Thursday 7 December 2023.
The safety, health, and wellbeing of Southern Cross Healthcare patients, staff, and medical specialists are of utmost importance to us. Our current approach includes ways to help protect our patients and workforce.
Whilst mask restrictions have been lifted in healthcare/hospitals, we still strongly encourage patients and employees/specialists to wear masks in our hospitals. These will offer protection against other respiratory viruses as well as Covid-19.
Please respect the choices of those who may have underlying illnesses or other reasons for wearing masks.
Patient / carer requirements
We no longer routinely test all patients coming into our hospitals for surgery/procedures. However, we are seeing an increase in reported cases in some regions so our hospitals in those affected areas may ask you to have a test performed as part of your admission. Having surgery while unwell will not result in a good recovery so a pre-admission test will help to reduce these risks.
In addition, if you or your carer have any cold-like symptoms, please advise the hospital. If the symptoms are very mild, your specialist will be asked to review you and discuss risks of you developing infection post-operatively. As part of that assessment, you will also be asked to undergo a RAT test prior to admission.
If you are a household contact of someone with Covid-19 please advise the admitting nurse. We recommend that you do a RAT test before leaving home. This will be repeated on arrival at the hospital.
A positive test will result in postponement of your planned procedure but you will be rescheduled as soon as possible.
Surgery after Covid-19 infection
If you are a patient and have had Covid-19 in the last 2 months, please advise your specialist who will make sure you are fit for surgery. Unless your Covid-19 infection was severe or you have ongoing symptoms, there should be a minimal delay to you undergoing your surgery. If you had a more severe infection, it is possible that non-urgent surgery will be delayed until 7 weeks after infection. However, if your surgery is urgent, your practitioner may still choose to proceed.
If surgery does proceed, you should not have any residual symptoms.
Requirements for visitors of patients at Southern Cross Hospitals
The Ministry of Health advises that if you are Covid-19 positive, you stay at home for five days, so please do not visit our hospitals during this time. For more information please go to: https://covid19.govt.nz/
Please do not come to our facilities if you feel unwell or have any of the following respiratory infection symptoms:
- a cough
- a sore throat
- shortness of breath
- head cold symptoms (runny nose, sneezing, nasal drip)
- muscle aches or fatigue
- loss of sense of smell
- a fever
On arrival, please practise good hand hygiene using the alcohol based products available.
Further information about Covid-19
The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website is a comprehensive and reliable information resource.