Food banks and social welfare agencies are bracing for a surge in requests for help when Omicron infections become widespread.
West Auckland’s Village Community Trust has been busy preparing and sorting through pallets of food.
"We've got lots of everything at the moment - it's your family basics, your spreads, flour, sugar, noodles, pasta canned food.
"Next week we are looking at doing 450 food parcels for the week... that's just our starting point and then from that point on, the numbers could increase by the day," said general manager Maliena Jones.
The trust faced supply issues like many organisations trying to source food.
"We have really good suppliers who have been working really hard to support us but things like toilet paper, the staples, everybody is after the same thing," she said. "There is a bit of a shortage."
Part of the reason why the trust believes demand would increase rapidly was due to changes that were recently introduced to contact isolation rules.
The Government announced that positive Covid-19 cases would have to isolate for two weeks, while contacts would have to isolate for 10 days. But, if other members of the household caught Covid during a positive case's isolation, the “isolation clock” starts again.
"It won't be once or twice; we might be providing food multiple times for these families... It's hard to know how to prepare.”
1News asked if the trust believed they could keep up with the expected demand as modellers expect New Zealand to have thousands of new Omicron infections daily in the coming weeks and months.
“If it’s what they are projecting - that we could go to thousands of cases a day - probably not," Jones said.
Manurewa Marae chief executive Natasha Kemp shared concerns about household isolation requirements. The marae also runs its own food bank programme, as well as Covid-19 testing and vaccinations.
"One of my biggest concerns is that our whānau can't isolate in the way they know they could be. We have intergenerational homes and there's multiple whānau in those homes.
"There might be 10 to 15 people in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom - we just don't have the resources to be able to isolate," Kemp said.
The marae had set up an 0800 hotline for those in need ahead of the expected surge.
"It's going to increase to up to 200 kai packs a day, which is what we did with Delta - it could even get higher than that… knowing that Omicron is more transmissible.
"Our marae is well prepared and ready for the next stage of Covid," she said.
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