VISITING HOSPITAL

All hospital visitors are encouraged to wear a medical face mask. Expand this message for information about visiting hospital. 

Last updated:
31 October 2024

Some visitor restrictions for all Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Waitaha Canterbury hospitals and health facilities remain in place, but we have relaxed others.

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

To keep everybody safe:

  • Visitors or support people are advised to not visit our facilities if they are unwell. We advise that you do not visit if you have recently tested positive for COVID-19 and haven’t completed your isolation period.
  • Patients may have more than one visitor, except in some situations such as multi-bed rooms where it can cause overcrowding.
  • Surgical/medical masks are encouraged to be worn at all sites. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Please practice hand hygiene with provided alcohol-based hand rub/gel

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.

Visiting patients with COVID-19

  • People can visit patients who have COVID-19 but they must wear a surgical mask as a minimum – please use surgical masks provided.

All of our Hospitals

Visiting hours for our hospitals have returned to pre COVID-19 hours.

All visitors are encouraged to wear a medical face mask.

Parents/caregivers can be with their child in hospital and visitors are now allowed, except for the Children’s Haematology and Oncology Day stay where visitor restrictions might apply.

Patients and visitors can also read the additional COVID-19 related visiting guidelines .

Aged Residential Care Facilities following usual infectious disease protocols

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Wednesday 12 August 2020Media release2 minutes to read

THIS IS AN ARCHIVED PAGE. The advice and information contained in this page may not be current and it should only be used for historical reference purposes.
Covid-19

Aged Residential Care Facilities following usual infectious disease protocols

Please attribute to Dr Cheryl Brunton, Medical Officer of Health, Canterbury DHB:

Canterbury DHB has received numerous media queries regarding a number of Christchurch rest-homes which are described as being in lockdown or partial lockdown.

When an Aged Residential Care facility has a resident or a group of residents who are unwell restricting visitors and isolating the resident/s is the most appropriate course of action. This is not new – taking a precautionary approach and keeping residents separate from each other and asking visitors to stay away is one of the most important actions ARC facilities can take to reduce the spread of infectious diseases. This protects other residents and staff.

Isolation is the correct protocol for any infectious disease including norovirus (a vomiting and diarrhoea illness), influenza or other respiratory infections – including COVID-19, along with increasing the level of PPE used by staff, stringent attention to hand hygiene, and scrupulous cleaning of high touch point areas (such as door handles, keyboards, phones etc).

These rest homes are to be commended for proactively taking steps to protect their residents and staff.  Many residents have been swabbed and to date all test results have returned negative for COVID-19. At this time of year there are many different flu-like respiratory illnesses circulating and we expect this will continue into early spring as it does most years.

We have good systems in place to support our response to outbreaks of any infectious diseases. Canterbury DHB’s Infection, Prevention and Control team along with Community & Public Health work collaboratively with Aged Residential Care providers to provide specialist advice when required.

In line with the Ministry of Health’s latest advice in response to community cases of COVID-19 in Auckland, all rest homes should now be restricting visiting under Alert Level 2.

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Page last updated: 25 September 2020

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