All rest home staff and new arrivals should be tested. I urge Capital and Coast District Health Board and Wellington Regional Public Health to heed this call by Simon Wallace, Aged Care Association CEO. Kapiti has a dozen large aged-care facilities employing almost 8 percent of the district's workforce. I want our most vulnerable citizens and the workers who support them to be protected.

Two deaths, and the discovery of Covid-19 clusters at rest homes elsewhere in the country highlights what we have always known from the beginning of this Pandemic - the elderly are particularly vulnerable to serious infection. For some time we have been concerned about the safety of this sector. Council 's EOC staff have been ringing our aged-care facilities regularly to check on how they were coping.

While I'm confident the owners of these facilities would have taken the required steps, like lockdowns and hygiene protocols, I refer to the statement by Director General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, that he had written to all DHBs asking staff to "systematically" inspect each aged-care facility to assess their protocols to prevent spreading infection and the amount of protective equipment in stock.

"We want to be really sure the settings are water-tight to be able to protect staff and residents....what we have found with clusters that have broken out, there were some deficiencies in the actual procedures," he said.

I urge Regional Public Health and the CCDHB to take further steps and heed the call by the Aged Care Association to test all the workers and new arrivals to create a "watertight" protection of our most vulnerable citizens and the committed workforce supporting their wellbeing. Aged-care workers in Kapiti I have talked to support the call.

Their continued health is also important to the economic recovery of Kapiti as we get out of this lockdown. A major contributor of jobs and income, in 2018 this sector's GDP contribution to the district was $95.7m

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