The nurses' union wants an urgent review of how the Covid-19 isolation hotels are being run, saying staff are becoming increasingly anxious and fearful amid the risk of infection.
A second person working at a managed isolation facility in Christchurch has tested positive for the coronoavirus.
The Ministry of Health says the person is a close workplace contact of a case reported yesterday - a health worker at the Sudima Christchurch Airport hotel who tested positive for the virus on Monday.
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Nurses Organisation (NZNO) kaiwhakahaere (manager) Kerri Nuku told RNZ's Morning Report programme today when health staff became infected, it often showed there was a failure in the system.
"So unless we have a review of the system to see whether a failure has happened we'll continue to have these outbreaks."
Where that potential failure lay was unclear, she said, and that was why a review was necessary to identify and rectify any issues.
"What we do see is that there are often a few nurses placed in responsibility of a number of patients or clients returning from overseas. So there are many pressure points within managed isolation units themselves, so part of the review is asking to break down where in the system is it failing."
Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said a review might be able to assist, but a thorough review was conducted usually anyway when cases among workers like this emerged.
"We do a thorough review and look how it might've happened and then we looked at the processes and procedures and if they need to modified or tightened then we do that across the board across all facilities."
Nurses are reporting to the union they are understaffed and overworked in a pressured working environment, which Nuku said might result in a bigger likelihood of mistakes happening.
"These nurses are tired, there are few nurses that have responsibilities for large numbers of clients and so the expectation on them is huge and the resource and support - what we're hearing - is little."
While Dr Bloomfield said he was not aware of any staffing issues or shortages in managed isolation facilities, he acknowledged that nurses' concerns should be looked into by district health boards and public health units.
"These are issues that we will need to have a look at, and it will be very important that we can assure the health staff ... they are safe, because they're doing a great job."
The healthcare workers on the ground were also anxious about going home and possibly spreading the virus to loved ones, Nuku said.
"Some of them [workers] are reporting it's quite laxed - support is not available for them to ensure they feel safe when they go home. That was the catch-cry early during Covid, these workers are certainly not necessarily feeling safe when they go home to their families."
Asked what the union would think of a dedicated facility where the nurses could stay after their shifts, instead of going home, Nuku said if that option was affordable that would be good but it also depended on what the nurses wanted.
"It's critical that nurses feel safe to go home... We shouldn't isolate them away from their families because we've been unable to contain or manage within the system.
"It's important they have some respite from their day-to-day work in that intense environment."
