"Beleaguered and weary" in the back room fight against Covid - that is how the team of 4,000 lab workers is feeling after what has been described as a "war-like onslaught" for their services according to their professional body.
The New Zealand Institute of Medical Laboratory Science says the northern laboratories, which have been in the thick of the Delta outbreak, have been working around the clock with no respite. What is summer going to bring?
Institute president Terry Taylor talks to Lisa Owen.