{"id":594152,"date":"2026-09-08T18:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594152\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T18:24:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:24:23","slug":"hospitals-were-overflowing-well-before-flu-cases-peaked-data-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594152\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitals were overflowing well before flu cases peaked, data reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospitals were overflowing well before flu cases reached their peak<\/a>, newly released data shows.<\/p>\n

Health NZ released a snapshot of the occupancy rates of eight hospitals at 8am over eight days in mid August.<\/p>\n

It showed most had more patients than staffed beds.<\/p>\n

Christchurch Hospital was worst hit – with nearly a fifth more patients than beds most days.<\/p>\n

Whang\u0101rei was usually at about 110 percent capacity, with Waikato just under.<\/p>\n

Auckland and Wellington were regularly over 100 percent, with North Shore and Wait\u0101kere between 103 and 93 percent.<\/p>\n

The figures covered 7 to 14 August, excluding the weekend.<\/p>\n

Flu hospitalisations were increasing that week but have grown to record numbers since then, prompting many hospitals to cut elective surgeries<\/a> and set up dedicated flu wards.<\/p>\n

\"Christchurch<\/p>\n

Health NZ said emergency department presentations began to drop off in the second half of August but were still very high.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Nate McKinnon<\/p>\n

Health NZ said hospital occupancy was measured as the percentage of staffed bed capacity at a point in time and could fluctuate throughout the day.<\/p>\n

When hospitals were over 100 percent occupancy, they used so-called flex beds – beds which were available only for very busy times and were not included in official occupancy counts.<\/p>\n

The figures in this story are several weeks old because it took that long for Health NZ to provide them.<\/p>\n

Health NZ said it could not give an update on hospital occupancy on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

However it said, nationally, emergency department presentations began to drop off in the second half of August but were still very high.<\/p>\n

It could not immediately give data for ED presentations for individual hospitals, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Emergency department doctors and nurses have told RNZ there was a lot of variation from hospital to hospital.<\/p>\n

RNZ requested the hospital occupancy rates after it was revealed last month some ambulance patients in the North Shore rohe were being diverted to Whang\u0101rei Hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It asked for the rates for those two hospitals, as well as for Waitakere, Auckland City, Waikato, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.<\/p>\n

Health NZ said it could not give the rates straight away and put the request through its Official Information Act process which took three weeks.<\/p>\n

Of the hospitals in the request, only Dunedin Hospital never hit 100 percent.<\/p>\n

Health NZ said the occupancy data did not include ICU, maternity, high dependency areas, emergency department observation units and psychogeriatric beds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospitals were overflowing well before flu cases reached their peak, newly released data shows. Health NZ released a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-594152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}