A Māori health leader says a new international misinformation study confirms the alarm many were desperately trying to raise last year about the impact on Māori during the initial vaccine rollout.
It modelled trusting individuals who seek better quality information and take precautionary measures; and distrusting people who reject quality information and have riskier behaviour.
It found major outbreaks cannot be suppressed once the density of distrusting individuals exceeds a certain threshold.
It says its findings highlight the importance of effective interventions to build trust and inform the public.
Māori ‘exposed to significant misinformation for longer’ National Māori Pandemic Group co-leader Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen said the Māori population was younger, so many had to wait to be eligible to get their vaccine dose.
“They [were] exposed to a significant amount of misinformation for longer.
“That’s created a problem for us in terms of getting the momentum for the vaccination programme into the right place.”
Dr McKree Jansen said the unvaccinated were being hit hardest by the omicron wave.
As of Friday, only 88 percent of Māori have had their second dose, and 58 percent their third compared with 95 percent and 73 (72.7) percent respectively of the general population.
McKree Jansen said Māori were now dying with covid-19 because of that misinformation.
He said for Māori and Pacific communities it was particularly troubling because those who were dying with the virus were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, rather than older people in other populations.
He said Māori and Pacific populations should have been prioritised in the vaccine rollout.
The Waitangi Tribunal has released a scathing ruling of the government’s covid-19 response and vaccine rollout, saying Māori were put at risk.
The tribunal said cabinet’s decision to go against official and expert advice and not prioritise Māori breached the Treaty principles of active protection and equity.
Misinformation has disrupted families, but is resolvable Dr McKree Jansen said misinformation had disrupted social and familial connection but he believed it was resolvable.
“We should actually spend the time and the effort to restore relationships with those people that have been affected by it.
“It is being very clear that health services are here to help people.
“I think it is conversations we’ll have within families to restore mana for people who feel that [they have] been belittled, to ensure that people know that they are loved and that they are cared for.”
He said the focus needed to be on learning the lessons and making sure it did not happen again.
“And making sure that when we say we are committed to equity that we do all the things necessary to achieve it.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
One third of all current cases in Aotearoa New Zealand are in children and teenagers, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield revealed at today’s update on the omicron covid-19 outbreak.
Dr Bloomfield gave an update on the omicron outbreak and was joined via Zoom by University of Otago’s Professor Peter McIntyre from the department of women’s and children’s health.
Dr Bloomfield said 14.4 percent of current cases of covid-19 were aged under nine and 17.4 percent were between 10 and 19.
The Ministry of Health reported today there had been 15,250 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 22 more deaths.
Professor McIntyre said that even though omicron was less severe, because there were more cases, health professionals — particularly in Auckland — were seeing more cases in tamariki.
He said early evidence from the US showed that in a group of 1000 children, those who had two doses of a vaccine had a statistically significantly reduced chance of getting an infection, but it was not as high as they had hoped.
Another study looking at 10,000 children turning up at an emergency department found that two doses cut back emergency department presentations more effectively — by about 50 percent.
He said the vaccine for 5-11 year olds was an insurance policy worth taking up.
Random selection
From late January, text messages had been sent to a random selection of the parents of vaccination children, Dr Bloomfield said.
“For the first vaccination, there were 800,300 respondents and very similar to the Australian data 18 percent reported some sort of side effect post-vaccination. For the second dose the equivalent figure was 24 percent,” he said.
“Most common were reaction at the injection site, headache and fatigue. All expected and commonly reported side effects that pass quickly.”
Less than half a percent for both first and second dose had any need to seek medical advice or care, he said.
Dr Bloomfield said the rates of paediatric vaccination were similar to what was happening in other places in the world.
Dr McIntyre said there were two major issues: access and parents who were not yet convinced
“I think we need to keep pushing the notion, particularly about the safety of the vaccine.”
Comfortable with vaccine
Parents are reasonably comfortable with the vaccine but some indicated they were waiting a month or two for the safety data, Dr Bloomfield said.
“We can really reassure parents this is a really safe vaccine for children.’
By far the most common locations for children getting vaccinations was a local pharmacy and a local GP, Dr Bloomfield said.
On vaccination post-covid infection, Dr Bloomfield said they were recommending a wait of three months from the date someone tests positive. This stood for all age groups and all stages of vaccination and all vaccines.
It has been nine weeks since omicron was first recorded in New Zealand and cases have peaked nearly everywhere but, with the wave roughly moving south, rural Southland looks to be last in line.
Three weeks ago, congressional Democrats dumped $15.6 billion in funding for COVID pandemic aid from the $1.5 trillion federal spending bill. When it happened, my knees wobbled. It is one thing to speak sunshine and roses about the current state of the crisis in an election year; it is quite another to close out funding to maintain the level of success we have achieved. If this were a ground war, it would be tantamount to sending the army home just as the enemy’s gates were coming into view.
Upon consideration, I could grudgingly see the logic of it … the Washington D.C. logic, anyway. Congressional Republicans were prepared to fight to the death over “new spending,” and a tussle like that regarding COVID money, in what had already been an agonizingly protracted budget fight, could have doomed the entire bill. That would have ended humanitarian funding for Ukraine, a number of climate protections, funding for child care and public education, as well as money to keep the federal government open and funded through September.
Fine, I thought at the time, cut the funding, whatever. As soon as the ink is dry on this budget bill, however, you congressfolk better get yourselves back to the drawing board and get this COVID funding nailed down. We are not nearly out of the woods yet, new variants are on the march, and our defenses will wither away before yet another onslaught. This, I thought three weeks ago, was common sense, enlightened self-interest. I watched, and I waited.
Three weeks later, and nothing on that front has happened. This fight for our very lives has been marred from the beginning by deliberate delusion and rampaging ignorance on the part of both government and the public sector. This latest fiasco, after everything we have learned and endured, absolutely takes the cake.
Dr. Vivek Murthy is the U.S. surgeon general. Dr. David Kessler is the chief science officer for the U.S. Covid-19 Response Team. The pair teamed up to pen a plea in the pages of The New York Times:
The federal government is running out of funds to provide Americans, especially those who are uninsured, with Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. Our efforts to sustain other critical elements of the public health response, from Covid-19 surveillance to the global vaccination campaign, are also now at risk. If the funding does not materialize, we will find ourselves in a far weaker position, struggling to keep up with a constantly evolving virus that will continue to threaten our health, our economy and our peace of mind.
Now, for the first time, we cannot order enough vaccines to provide boosters for all Americans if a fourth dose is deemed necessary in the fall. If we need variant-specific vaccines, we will not have the funds to secure them, deliver them or administer them. Last week, we were forced to cut our shipments of lifesaving monoclonal antibodies to states by 35 percent — and we anticipate running out of monoclonal antibodies later this spring. We will not be able to continue making home tests available, and the critical surveillance efforts that help us anticipate new waves and variants will be compromised.
A number of states, including Colorado and Minnesota, have begun scaling back or closing down COVID testing and vaccination sites. Test and vaccine manufacturers are cutting back on production. This is taking place just as the numbers of people getting vaccinated has all but fallen off the table. The FDA has announced authorization for at-risk people 50 and over to get a second booster shot, but is doing next to nothing to promote the booster’s availability or effectiveness.
“Some U.S. health care providers are informing uninsured people they can no longer be tested for the virus free of charge and will have to pay for the service,” reports the Times. “[A] a fund established to reimburse doctors for care for uninsured Covid patients was no longer accepting claims for testing and treatment ‘due to lack of sufficient funds.’” As one front-line medical professional noted on Twitter, “The rationing of COVID-care by ability to pay begins.”
And hovering over all that, this: The B.A.2 subvariant is out there, growing stronger by the day as it spreads its influence throughout the population. After B.A.2 will almost certainly come another variant, and another, because this thing is not nearly over. In point of fact, it may never be completely over. Cutting that COVID funding from the budget with no intention of replacing it is tantamount to playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.
Back to work, Congress. You giddily authorized $768 billion for spending on war. $15 billion to hold the line on COVID barely registers on the budgetary Richter Scale. Get this done, now.
COMMENTARY:By Nick Rockel, a reflection as Aotearoa New Zealand yesterday experienced its worst day since the covid-19 pandemic began.
It came up in my Facebook memories that it was two years to the day on March 23 since Aotearoa New Zealand started its first lock-down. Coincidentally also the day many of the remaining restrictions and regulations relating to covid were relaxed or removed.
On this day two years ago Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced, “New Zealand has moved to Alert Level 3, effective immediately. In 48 hours, New Zealand will move to Alert Level 4”. We had our first case of community transfer that could not be traced to the border.
It would be seven weeks before we went down to level 2
New rituals were started, the daily health update at 1pm became must watch viewing — were the numbers going up or down? There was much excitement from certain family members each time schools being closed was extended.
We changed time zones — the kids waking hours shifted, staying up and getting up late, and while you nagged them to attend online classes it didn’t really matter.
We spent a lot more time with our teenage children than we would have otherwise. Created lots of memories albeit mostly based in the lounge, things like playing charades and enjoying Netflix and popcorn.
We laughed at the Aussies for buying all the toilet paper, meanwhile here shops ran out of flour, yeast, icing sugar, as everyone baked. Sourdough starter was the thing to do.
Consciousness cooking
Diets improved, there was little meat and what was available was wildly over priced. The kids got more involved in cooking, there was less food waste as we became more conscious than normal about what he had and needed to use up.
A good life lesson, and of course no takeaways or Uber eats.
The working world changed with Zoom “you’re on mute” meetings. Always interesting if the person in the meeting hadn’t put a background on, realistically we were often not in even the most casual of office attire.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s “deadliest day” yesterday … as reflected in the New Zealand Herald today. Image: APR screenshot
Teddy bears appeared in windows as people started walking or cycling round the neighborhood. There were many small acts of kindness.
Sure we missed out on a lot of activities, dance classes and competitions, football seasons, school camps, and of course seeing friends and family.
At the beginning of covid, as we saw things change from an event in a part of China we probably hadn’t heard of to spreading around the world, we realised planned events that had seen many hours of preparation and fund-raising could not proceed. There would be many more cancellations and disappointments along the way.
But there were good things too.
Team of five million
The pride that the team of five million felt in how well the lockdown was working to stop the spread.
The excitement the day we reached zero community cases, the PM said she did a little dance — I’m sure she wasn’t the only one.
We moved forward with restrictions and people mostly were happy to cooperate. There was little sympathy for those breaking the rules, not following lock down restrictions, breaking out of MIQ etc. It felt like those people were letting the rest of us down by not doing their bit.
We had periods of relative freedom then more lockdowns. We were used to this now, after the announcement of new cases we’d jump on the supermarket site and try to get a delivery window — bugger none available.
The last of the big lock-downs was predominantly only Auckland. It was a long one and something unexpected and unprecedented happened — the rest of the country started to feel the love for Auckland.
I have to say as a long time resident, who despite living in Tamaki Mākaurau half my life never fully considered myself an Aucklander, I felt pretty bloody proud of the people of my city.
Vaccinations arrived and we watched the progress — could we get a high percentage vaccinated before the next wave came? The Vaxathon reminded those of us of a certain age of Telethons gone by — it was such a positive Kiwi thing. And yes, we quickly became one of the most vaccinated populations on earth.
Along with the vaccines came the mandates and passes. Most of us got it, could see why they were necessary and were happy to go along with them — heck who wouldn’t want to get a free vaccine against a virus killing millions around the world and protect yourself and others?
Dissent and dissatisfaction
“Some people who were no doubt a little reluctant to got vaccinated so they could go to work or take part in things. But some people didn’t want to be told to take the vaccine.
They wanted to be free to not take it and continue to do their jobs, take part in leisure activities, which put them into contact with those of us who had been vaccinated. Many of us had limited sympathy for this point of view.
The dissent or dissatisfaction of some became rich material for the political opposition who had struggled for oxygen with the daily updates from the PM and the Ministry of Health.
They and some reporters in the media found that an individual who was having a tough time as part of the restrictions, someone in MIQ unable to be with with a sick relative, someone missing a funeral, someone stuck overseas unable to get home, was given a lot of air time.
More coverage it often seemed than was given to the vast majority who were happy with things and grateful that we weren’t seeing the serious illness and deaths occurring overseas.
So what were the changes flagged last week?
We’ll be keeping the traffic light system to handle new variants or pressure on the health system.
Pragmatic steps
From Friday red-level indoor gathering restrictions are raised to 200 people, and there will no longer be limits of for outdoor gatherings including sports events, concerts, etc. There will also be no need to scan or sign in from this time.
From the April 5 no more use of vaccine passes will be required, and there will be no more mandates for education, police, the military, and staff in places like restaurants and bars. There will still be some mandates required in the health system.
These are pragmatic steps given the level of community spread and the lack of measures that could realistically contain it. But we also need to continue to protect our most vulnerable people from exposure to covid, I can see why the government has kept some restrictions in place.
Will those who have complained so much, the mandate protesters, the politicians and media, now draw a line under it? Move forward accepting that even if the government didn’t always get it 100 percent right they did bloody well most of time?
Yeah right!
Even after all the precautions and vaccinations my family and I eventually got covid a few weeks ago, pretty unavoidable without isolating such was the infection rate of the omicron strain.
Isolation felt like another lockdown except everyone around you in the community carried on with life as normal, and there was no sending a designated person to queue at the supermarket. Whereas the earlier lockdowns has been quiet this one was full of noise traffic and construction.
Remembering best of times
As we return to life with fewer restrictions we‘ll no doubt remember those days of lockdowns, the extra time with immediate family, taking pleasure in simple things, and yes the hard times and missed events that caused us sorrow.
This time will remain in the memories of those who are kids today and be something they annoy their own children and grandchildren with tales of many years from now.
Some will continue to work remotely, perhaps there will be a bit more consideration for those in our community who could do with a helping hand — even if it is just dropping off a few things at the letterbox. If there is another pandemic, a more dangerous variant, or some other event, we’ll be well placed to handle it calmly.
Dogs will remember lockdowns as the best of times; all of their people were home, even if they didn’t really go anywhere.
Many of us will remember that feeling of the nation coming together and wonder if maybe, just maybe, we could apply that same collective effort to addressing other problems we face as a society.
The last two years haven’t been easy but we bloody did it, we saved lives — think of the awful final hours in ICU that didn’t result for so many additional people due to those actions. It was worth it.
Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the publisher of the Daily Read where his article was first published. It is republished here with the author’s permission.
In spite of a record 34 covid-related deaths being reported in New Zealand today, Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay says it is encouraging to see an overall and sustained drop in case numbers.
“For three days last week, case numbers were reported at over 20,000 … today’s case number is up a bit [on Monday] but that is to be expected as testing rates are always a bit low over the weekend,” she said.
One person was in their 30s, one person was in their 50s, five were in their 60s, nine were in their 70s, seven in their 80s and 11 were in their 90s.
Seventeen were male and 17 were female.
The reduction in case numbers has been most pronounced in Auckland. Cases have fallen from just under 4300 reported cases last Monday to 2300 yesterday.
Dr McElnay said while numbers overall were dropping, regional spikes were occurring.
The so-called “Mexican wave of cases” is being reflected the most in Canterbury, she said. “We’re seeing those numbers roll down the country.”
Overall, numbers were expected to continue to decrease over the week.
Rest of NZ lagging
The only district health boards (DHBs) with increases in numbers are Whanganui, MidCentral, Taranaki and the South Island DHBs.
“That probably tells us that the rest of New Zealand is about a couple of weeks behind Auckland,” Dr McElnay said.
“It gives us a signal of where we hope to be in the next couple of weeks.”
“We are optimistic that in the next couple of weeks the rest of the country will follow the same pattern as Auckland and we will see a drop in hospitalisation and a decrease in pressure on our health services.”
Dr McElnay said that once a person tested positive for covid-19, they should not test again for 28 days.
If you develop new symptoms after that, then test. If you test positive, you are considered a new case and you must isolate again.
This weekend was the start of eased restrictions which the government announced early last week.
Meanwhile, more than 1300 doses of Novavax’s covid-19 vaccine, which has been available since March 14 for those who cannot have the Pfizer jab or would prefer not to, have so far been administered.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Vanuatu health authorities record 296 new positive cases Vanuatu Minister of Health Bruno Leingkon announced that 2577 covid-19 cases have been recorded.
Five people have been hospitalised for Covid-related illnesses. But there have been no Covid-related deaths in Vanuatu, which remains under alert level 3.
The lockdown has been extended for a further five days.
Samoa records more community cases Samoa now has a total of 1239 active community cases of covid-19, as another 182 people tested positive.
The Ministry of Health said 97 percent of community cases are located in Upolu and the remaining 3 percent in Savai’i.
No community cases have been recorded in the islands of Manono and Apolima Tai.
The ministry said women make up 58 percent of confirmed community cases and 15 to 35 year olds have recorded the most infections.
No additional cases have been detected at the border.
Mandatory testing for travellers to Tahiti to be abolished Although another 190 covid-19 cases have been recorded in French Polynesia in the last 48 hours, Tahiti is easing testing requirements for travellers.
The electronic registration system for travellers, as well as mandatory tests for arriving passengers at Tahiti’s airport, will be abolished from tomorrow.
The health authorities say six patients are in hospital, but none are in intensive care.
The number of active cases has continued to decline and is now 516.
The death toll stands at over 640, with most of the fatalities occuring during last year’s delta variant outbreak.
Two in intensive care in New Caledonia New Caledonia has recorded another 32 covid-19 cases, confirming the trend of declining numbers.
The latest figure, issued on Friday, brings the total number of cases since September to 60,167.
Sixteen covid patients have been hospitalised, 2 of whom are in intensive care.
From today it will be possible to visit patients in hospitals and care centres without a health pass, although masks must still be worn.
Masks are no longer mandatory to be worn in public, but their continued use is recommended.
So far the pandemic has claimed 310 lives in New Caledonia, all of them during the delta outbreak in September.
CNMI drops indoor masking requirement The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas will no longer require people to wear face masks indoors.
The governor’s Covid-19 Task Force and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation (CHCC) have downgraded the US territory’s CDC community level from high to medium.
Local health authorities have cautioned immunocompromised individuals to still wear masks indoors. The same advice stands for people whose family members are immunocompromised.
“In Community Level Medium, people who are considered immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness should talk to their healthcare provider about whether they need to wear a mask and take other precautions. Also, people who live with or have social contact with immunocompromised individuals should wear a mask when indoors with them,” the CHCC said in a statement.
The CHCC also said it would continue to require visitors and clinic patients to wear masks in patient-serving areas.
Last Thursday, the task force and CHCC also confirmed the CNMI’s 33rd Covid-19-related death.
Twenty six additional cases have been recorded, bringing the CNMI total to 11,022 cases since March 28, 2020.
All 26 cases were identified on March 24, 2022. As of March 25, 2022, three individuals have been hospitalised from covid-19.
A covid-19 modeller says hundreds more people could die in Aotearoa New Zealand’s first wave of the omicron outbreak.
Health officials reported today that 11 more people with covid-19 had died in New Zealand, with 12,882 new community cases reported and 861 people in hospital with the coronavirus — including 21 in ICU or HDU.
The total death toll stands at 269, with the current average of 12 deaths a day of people with covid-19.
Professor Michael Plank from the University of Canterbury and Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa expected this death rate to continue for a few more weeks, and ultimately between 300 and 500 people to die by the end of the first omicron wave.
“Because although it looks like cases have peaked, deaths [lag behind],” Professor Plank said.
The death total was at about the lower to middle end of projections from earlier this year — which picked between 400 and 1200 deaths, he said.
A reason for New Zealand’s low death rate high booster uptake among older people and young people comprising a large amount of those infected.
New covid-19 variants
But Professor Plank said there still could be new covid-19 variants or second waves which could affect the numbers.
If the virus took hold in communities with low booster rates, for example Māori, or high risk populations such as those in aged care facilities, that could cause the rate to increase again, he said.
Overall, there have been fewer deaths than usual in New Zealand since the pandemic started because lockdowns basically eliminated influenza.
But with borders opening soon bringing in travellers with infectious diseases, and winter coming, there are still difficult times to come.
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said it was likely to be a bad influenza season, and it was crucial people get the flu jab.
Big picture — NZ has done well Professor Baker said it was prudent that older people and those in poor health thought about cutting back on socialising for a few weeks while the omicron outbreak ran its course.
While nationwide case numbers appeared to have peaked, many in the community were infected with the virus, he said.
But the big picture was that New Zealand’s covid-19 response had been effective, with the death toll among the lowest in the world, Baker said.
There were five times the number of deaths in Australia and Singapore, which also implemented strong measures to combat the spread of the virus.
Baker said the death toll was 20 times higher in Hong Kong, Denmark and Canada and 50 times higher in the UK.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
COVID cases are rising throughout Europe and Asia, leading some experts in the United States to wonder whether another wave is around the corner. Caseloads have been low in all 50 states following the Omicron spike in late 2021 and earlier this year, leading to a broad relaxation of mask mandates and a decrease in remote work options throughout the country. Nearly all Republicans in Congress, and many conservative Democrats, are pushing for a repeal of the continuing federal mask mandate on planes and public transportation.
The spike in cases overseas is being driven by a subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2. Early evidence suggests it may be even more transmissible than the initial variant, which caused record surges around the world. There’s also cause for cautious optimism, however, as it appears that immunity caused by the first variant extends to the new subvariant. Between vaccinations and boosters, and so-called “natural immunity” from a previous infection, the United States may have a wall of protection to prevent caseloads — and, more importantly, hospitalizations and deaths — from spiking in the coming months.
Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s point person on COVID, said on March 20 that he expected a rise in cases, even if it doesn’t amount to another full-blown wave. Fauci estimated that the new subvariant accounts for about 25 to 30 percent of new cases.
If the worst is avoided in the United States, it will not be because state and federal officials have taken measures to prepare for the next wave. To the contrary, Congress recently failed to include additional pandemic funding in its annual massive spending bill. The result could be disastrous, especially for poor people and those without insurance. As Republicans, conservative Democrats and even some public health officials insist on putting the pandemic behind us and getting back to “normal,” it’s not at all clear that the country — or the world — is through with COVID.
Even at the current levels, the push from some to adopt a new normal of living with COVID often ignores the risks to immunocompromised people and those who aren’t eligible for the vaccine. Millions of people who may not fit the CDC’s definition of immunocompromised are living with chronic illness, disabilities, or other health concerns that put them at a heightened risk. If aspects of the pandemic like regular remote work and telehealth become less common, these are the communities most likely to be left behind — even under what some mainstream pundits are considering a best-case scenario.
And maintaining the current levels of community spread could be elusive. President Joe Biden’s plans at the federal level have largely been hampered by Congress, which has reverted from a brief period where it actually addressed public needs back to an anti-public health posture. Early rounds of pandemic relief were passed with so-called deficit spending, but Republicans began insisting that Democrats find a way to “pay for” the programs — Washington, D.C.-speak for increasing taxes or finding another source of revenue. Biden had initially asked Congress for $22 billion in new pandemic funding, which lawmakers then cut to $15 billion, with Republicans and some conservative Democrats insisting on the spending offsets. The floated compromise was that new revenue would come from states that had already received pandemic funding, prompting a rebellion from a handful of House Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then pulled the new COVID money from the bill, prompting fear from the White House that Congress would fail to pass the needed funding altogether.
Without the additional spending, numerous federal projects are at risk on a rolling basis over the next several months. The government will soon be forced to cut shipments of monoclonal antibodies by 30 percent as soon as next week. In April, the administration will end a program that reimbursed providers for testing, tracing and treating uninsured patients. As a result, people without insurance are facing a looming catastrophe if they contract COVID or need an additional booster shot. Fears of unknown medical bills could also prevent uninsured people from seeking preemptive care or treatment, potentially further exacerbating community spread.
The disasters don’t stop there. Support for domestic testing manufacturers will run out by June. A senior administration official told reporters that without more funding, the federal government “will lack the funding needed to accelerate research and development of next-generation vaccines that provide broader and more durable protection, including a vaccine that protects against a range of variants.” The administration had planned to make second booster shots available to the public at large in the fall if experts deemed it scientifically necessary, but that’s at risk now as well.
Taken together, this means the United States isn’t prepared to deal with future COVID variants, an entirely different pandemic, or even the existing levels of spread currently in the country. Although cases have dramatically dropped off since the height of the Omicron spike, the U.S. is still registering almost 30,000 cases a day on average, and roughly 830 deaths.
As The Atlantic’s Ed Yong argues, existing U.S. pandemic measures were “already insufficient” to the task at hand. “These measures needed to be strengthened, not weakened even further,” Yong writes. “Abandoning them assumes that the U.S. will not need to respond to another large COVID surge, when such events are likely, in no small part because of the country’s earlier failures. And even if no such surge materializes, another infectious threat inevitably will.” He adds that the United States is now “sprinting” towards the next pandemic.
Instead of creating the kind of robust, lasting institutions and programs that could respond to the country’s current as well as short-term and long-term needs, Congress is burying its head in the sand. Cutting funding for COVID measures now is the very definition of penny wise, pound foolish. Or, to use a medical aphorism, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Instead of taking this period of relatively low levels of community spread to shore up our collective defenses, Congress is rolling the dice, betting that the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
This should be a time to reflect on the enormous success that COVID vaccine developments represent: success paid for directly, and backstopped, by public money. If there is a lesson to be taken from March 2020 until now, it’s that the U.S. federal government is actually capable of making people’s lives better if it allocates the necessary resources to do so. In a more just world, the vaccines themselves would be owned by the public and distributed globally, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s in our own collective self-interest to deprive the virus of communities to spread and mutate. That’s not the world we live in, but it would be a mistake not to embrace the successes we’ve seen over the last two years, even if they need to be reframed away from the logic of public-private partnerships.
The pandemic has shown that public spending at the federal level can produce enormous public benefits. Unfortunately, Congress seems to have reverted back to an austerity-based, deficit hawk mindset. That’s not a surprise, but it does mean that public health in this country is at risk over the next several months, let alone the next several decades.
A covid-19 modeller is hopeful omicron hospitalisations have peaked and says at this stage New Zealand’s death rate is at a comparable level to other countries during an omicron wave.
The number of people needing care dropped for four straight days until yesterday, although the number of people hospitalised did increase slightly from 841 yesterday to 848 today.
Even with today’s slight increase there are still 168 fewer people now in hospital than early last week.
Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa project leader Dion O’Neale said New Zealand’s covid death rate is about the international standard for an omicron wave.
He said the numbers look to be comparable to other countries: “We’re not looking outstanding in either direction for death rates.
“One thing that’s a big risk for fatalities is if you start to get spread that starts to make its way through aged care and residential care facilities, that’s a super high risk situation and that’s going to give you these spikes, or clumps of deaths coming together.”
258 covid-related deaths
Overall, New Zealand has had 258 covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic.
O’Neale is hopeful New Zealand has seen the peak in hospitalisations.
But he warns the descent will be “bumpy” with increases if the virus gets into vulnerable populations like rest homes.
O’Neale said for this wave, the country appears to have avoided a health system “collapse” some people were worried about.
“From the data I’ve seen anyway it looks like we are scraping through and managed to maybe, hopefully, get past the worst of this peak without exceeding that capacity.”
Hospitals have gone to unusual lengths to continue operating while many of their own staff are off sick — including people doing other jobs to manage demand.
Voluntary extra shifts
Canterbury nurses who volunteer for extra shifts in aged care are getting $350 a night to cover ongoing covid-related staff shortages, while Auckland nurses and midwives were offered a $500 bonus for working extra overnight shifts, as staffing shortages climbed to 25 percent during the city’s omicron peak.
In Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital staff such as doctors and medical technicians stepped in to help on the wards and in the emergency department during the omicron peak, while in Wellington non-clinical staff with clinical backgrounds stepped in to help fill staffing shortages.
Only about half the planned care was going ahead at Wellington region hospitals last week, while Auckland hospitals put all but the most urgent care on hold during its omicron peak.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Climate scientists have been warning for years about the menace of “feedback loops.” A feedback loop takes place when the right set of circumstances creates a situation that feeds upon itself, growing stronger with every cycle.
The not-so-frozen tundra of Siberia serves as perfect current example. Human-caused warming melts the permafrost in the ground, allowing the release of billions of tons of methane from the soil. That methane enters the atmosphere and warms it more, causing more permafrost to melt and release more methane. Round and round we go.
As we inch toward the thousandth day of COVID-19 in the U.S., another kind of feedback loop has formed itself. Instead of wind and rain, this one is made of people and policy, an extension of capitalism you could see coming a mile off with the right kind of eyes.
I can even pinpoint the day this COVID feedback loop began to eat itself, and us: March 20, 2020. On that day, the first of what became a flood tide of jowly capitalists went on the cable news networks with the demand that “low-risk,” low-wage workers should go back to work and just let the virus “burn through” their ranks.
The intervening months have descended into a lethal tug of war between people who believe the science and are willing to take precautions to avoid even more mass death, and the “my freedom” people who are willing to let COVID carry off millions of people rather than subject themselves to the gross tyranny of… masks and reasonable health measures? If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believed it possible, and would have walked out of any movie daring to peddle such nonsense in a script.
The script itself, while absurd, is also simplicity itself: Endure a lethal COVID surge, but don’t prepare for the next one — and meanwhile, actively stand down current defenses so people go to work and spend money because, “It’s over!” NOPE, another mass wave of death followed by another wave of too-late restrictions followed by another surge of bleak depression and despair.
Some of the smoke clears (again), restrictions are lifted (again) in the name of the capitalist imperative (again), enough people are gulled (again) into letting their guard down. NOPE, a vaccine-resistant subvariant emerges from North Korea (theoretically) and lays waste to Southeast Asia in as much time as it takes to play the World Cup. Lather rinse repeat, but this time the culling is largely relegated to people like me — those with underlying medical risk factors — once it reaches these shores, because of course it will, because the last thing we’ll do is restrict air travel…
Today, they’re calling the next COVID-related challenge a “stress test,” a chance to throw open all the doors and see how well things go with virtually no standard precautions in place. “Whatever happens next, we’re living the reality the CDC’s guidance bargained for,” writes Katherine J. Wu for The Atlantic. “The country’s new COVID rules have asked us to sit tight, wait, and watch. We may soon see the country’s true tolerance for disease and death on full display.”
I’m not certain exactly how or when the decision was made to chart this perilous course. It just sort of… happened, like osmosis. A segment of the population found that ever-present permanent high gear of high dudgeon about masks and perfectly safe shots, capitalism whispered “Yeah what they said” through all the available political and social channels.
Suddenly, here we are, on the edge of a test we are not prepared to take. There is enough proof of this in the public surveys to give one pause. One February Washington Post/ABC News poll has 58 percent of the people saying controlling the spread of COVID is the top priority. A Yahoo News poll conducted precisely that same week has 51 percent saying returning to normal and “learning to live” with COVID is most important… and if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.
Polls shmolls, I know, but something is badly out of joint. David Lim of Politicoexplains what a new COVID surge will find when it comes:
Covid-19 infections are rebounding in several European countries and Biden officials are monitoring infections in the United Kingdom, where cases have jumped more than 36 percent over the past week. Meanwhile, the number of molecular tests shipped each week by major manufacturers in the United States has fallen by more than 50 percent over the last month.
Scott Becker, the CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said that the U.S. is repeating the same mistakes it made last summer when demand for testing plummeted and test manufacturers scaled back production. “It’s like we’ve learned absolutely nothing as a system during this pandemic,” Becker said. “I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t happen again because they don’t have the demand.”
The concern over the supply of testing comes as the Biden administration warns Congress that if it does not soon provide more than $22 billion in additional funding, the administration will not be able to purchase new supplies of drugs, vaccines, masks and tests. The White House on Tuesday plans to wind down the federal subsidies that guarantee free tests for uninsured people due to lack of funding.
This, even as the administration is preparing to endorse a second booster shot, meaning a fourth overall shot, to help older Americans fight off the virus. There is precedent for this — polio inoculation requires a four-dose regimen of that vaccine. But hmmm… why would we need another layer of protection if we have this thing in hand?
Answer: We don’t. This weird passage we’ve entered is the COVID policy version of throwing the parachute out of the plane and then jumping out after it. That big green thing rushing up at you? Yeah, that’s the ground, which currently holds the remains of nearly a million souls lost in this country alone. Meanwhile the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron is raising increasing levels of hell around the world, with no certainty yet as to the severity of an actual infection wave. At present, it makes up more than 55 percent of new cases in New England, and 34.9 percent nationally. If history is any guide at all, that wave is likely coming.
We weren’t ready before because it was all unprecedented. We aren’t ready now because capitalism’s whisper campaign combined with toxic right-wing politics were potent enough to buckle the knees of even the most stalwart of COVID policy advocates. After all, it’s an election year. In this, the country fails to live up to Uri Freedman’s new benchmark for national strength: The ability to take a punch, get knocked down and then get up again, however many times it takes.
We are not ready for a new COVID wave, deliberately. I shudder in my soul to imagine the impending fury and fear, the wrath of those who thought they heard something hopeful, only to discover it was God laughing at their plans. The feedback loop continues, and there will be hell to pay.
A Whanganui iwi leader says the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s decision to ease covid-19 measures at this time is a disgrace and shocking.
He is warning Māori to stay vigilant against omicron and prepare for more to come.
Tūpoho chair Ken Mair says Māori must continue to be extremely careful and take precautions against covid-19, despite the government’s new strategy to begin living with the virus.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said gathering limits would ease before the weekend, with no limit for outside venues and gatherings of up to 200 allowed inside.
Vaccine passes and scanning would no longer be needed from April 4, and mandates would be scrapped for all except those in the health and aged care sectors, Corrections and at the border.
But Mair said the country was far from out of the woods, as shown by the number of daily covid-19 cases being reported — with 11 new deaths and 18,423 infections.
“It just seems crazy that the government are putting in place this strategy right now, at the worst time in regard to the high numbers of omicron within our community. It’s extremely dangerous,” Mair said.
‘Where’s the Māori lens?’
“Where’s the Māori lens over this? Certainly, within our community there are hundreds [of cases] and there are a number in hospital.
“I just can’t understand a strategy where there hasn’t been any real analysis with substance in regard to the impact upon iwi, hapū and Māori, noting that we’re an extremely vulnerable community in the context of respiratory and asthma ailments.”
Mair said he understood some Māori leaders had been in discussion with the government and had made recommendations for the new strategy, but it appeared they had been ignored.
“I’ve been deeply concerned over the last couple of months where there doesn’t appear to be a strong Māori voice coming through or anything that might indicate that the government have a clear understanding of the ramifications of their decision around the covid strategy.
“This is a classic example — decisions being made right in the midst of cases going up, new variants around the corner, without understanding the impact and implications for Māori. I just think that’s a disgrace and shocking.”
Mair said he thought the strategy had been politicised, with Labour’s polling and political pressure the key factors.
“What motivates you to put in place an extremely dangerous strategy? You can only assume the motivation’s around political expediency and the impact upon economic wellbeing, without having the health lens driving your decision making.
Risk for vulnerable ignored
“The decisions by the prime minister and the government clearly have not taken into account the real vulnerability of Māori, and I think Māori, iwi and hapū have to be extremely careful in this precarious time.”
Yesterday, the prime minister said restrictions were being eased because it was safe to do so. Mair said this ignored the risk that remained for the vulnerable and sent the wrong message.
“I think because of the government’s strategy, people are saying things like: well, we’re going to get it anyway, it doesn’t matter, let’s get on with it and get back to normality as quickly as possible.
“The problem with those comments, of course, is the vulnerability of our Māori community, hapū and iwi is extremely high.
“I think our community in general is beginning to take a kind of defeatist approach and we should be, I think, extremely careful and vigilant in regard to dealing with this omicron.
“I have no doubt in my mind there’ll be more variants around the corner and we should always be prepared.”
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.
A federal health agency tasked with covering Covid-19 testing and treatment for uninsured Americans officially stopped accepting claims on Wednesday because it is out of funding, a shortfall caused by congressional lawmakers’ failure to approve new coronavirus aid.
Martin Kramer, a spokesperson for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), said in a statement Tuesday that “the lack of funding for Covid-19 needs is having real consequences.”
“We have begun an orderly shutdown of the program,” Kramer said, referring to theHRSA Covid-19 Uninsured Program, which has been reimbursing providers for coronavirus care for the uninsured since the early stages of the pandemic.
Nearly 10% of U.S. residents — around 31 million people — don’t have any form of health insurance, according tofederal estimates.
The HRSA has alsowarnedin recent days that without a quick infusion of federal funds, it will have to stop accepting coronavirus vaccine reimbursement claims on April 5.
“Federal coverage for Covid-19 treatment and testing for the uninsured ends today. Coverage for vaccine administration for the uninsured ends in about two weeks,” Adam Gaffney, a critical care doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance,lamentedon Twitter. “The rationing of Covid-care by ability to pay begins.”
The Biden White House has asked for more than $20 billion to purchase fresh supplies of masks, therapeutics, tests, and vaccines and to keep key pandemic response programs running, but Republican lawmakers havequestionedthe need for additional Covid-19 money and insisted that any funding be repurposed from existing state programs — a non-starter for Democratic lawmakers whowarntheir states would be hurt by such a scheme.
Disagreements over funding sources ultimately led the Democratic leadership topullaround $16 billion in coronavirus aid from a recent omnibus spending package that contained $782 billion for the U.S. military — $29 billion more than President Joe Bidenoriginally requested.
White House Chief of Staff Ronald KlaininsistedTuesday that the Biden administration is not “turning the page” on the coronavirus pandemic, which is still killingmore than 1,000 peopleper day in the U.S. on average.
“We are keeping businesses and schools open — and reducing hospital and ICU cases — by making vaccines, boosters, treatments, and tests widely available,” Klain said. “And we will continue to do so as long as Congress funds this work.”
But withdozensof Republicans refusing to support new relief funding, there does not appear to be a path forward for a standalone coronavirus measure in the evenly divided Senate.
“We don’t need Covid funding,” Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa.)toldThe Atlantic, expressing a view common among GOP lawmakers. “Most people would say we’re done. We have more issues with inflation than Covid right now.”
Vox’s Dylan MatthewswroteTuesday that if the congressional stalemate over Covid-19 funding persists, “the federal effort to halt the virus could effectively be over, even though the pandemic itselfclearly isn’t.”
“That would be a disaster,” Matthews added.
According to a February Covid-19 funding tableobtainedbyPolitico, more than $45 billion of the $47.8 billion that Congress approved for testing and mitigation in theAmerican Rescue Planis currently “obligated or being executed,” $2.6 billion is already allocated, and “none remains available for new initiatives.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has revealed cabinet’s decisions about when and how covid-19 restrictions will be eased.
She said the traffic light system would remain to help manage any future outbreaks.
However, Ardern said things had changed since the system was introduced:
New Zealand is now dealing with the omicron variant, rather than delta;
there is more more data available now and the government is better able to identify which environments are high risk; and
there are high rates of vaccination coverage.
The changes came as the Ministry of Health reported today that the national death toll had risen above 200 — to a record 210 — with 11 further deaths, and 20,087 new community cases of covid-19.
With that in mind, Ardern said she was announcing that all outdoor gathering limits would be removed from the traffic light system.
She said indoor gathering limits would increase from 100 to 200 under the red light setting.
Ardern said data showed hospitality had a relatively low secondary attack rate of 6.7 percent, which was backed up by other research.
She said it was the view of public health officials that hospitality gathering limits could be increased in the red setting from 100 to 200 without having a significant impact on the health system, particularly when retaining the seated and separated rules.
She also announced that vaccine passes would no longer be required from 11.59pm on April 4.
Watch the announcement
Video: RNZ New
Businesses and events would still be able to use them, if they chose to do so, but they would no longer be mandated, she said.
Ardern said masks were vital, and while people did not like them — for good reason — a study from the British Medical Journal late last year showed mask wearing reduced new cases by 53 percent.
In the orange setting, outdoor events will also be limitless. Close contact is higher risk for indoor events, however, so organisers of events over 500 people are encouraged to either add extra capacity or provide seating.
Green will not have restrictions but there will be guidance, and will not change.
“These changes are based on the best available evidence we have right now in real time. We believe they will make the Covid Protection Framework easier to maintain while also still being very effective,” Ardern said.
She said the changes could be made almost immediately and would come into effect at 11.59pm on March 25.
The next review of the traffic light settings and which setting the country sits in will happen on April 4.
New Zealand’s new covid-19 traffic light system settings. Graphic: NZ govt
Mandates needed for delta
On mandates and vaccine passes, Ardern said she was initially not in favour of their use but after months of delta it became clear that mandates were needed to achieve vaccination levels required for safe reopening, and passes had a role to play too.
She said these were undoubtedly one of the reasons the country reached 95 percent of the eligible population vaccinated, and achieved the near elimination of delta over summer, but omicron had changed things.
Almost all of New Zealand’s more than 500,000 cases of covid-19 had been in the omicron wave, she said. Many cases do not show symptoms and testing did not catch every case, so modellers expected total cases now could be as high as 1.7 million.
For the unvaccinated, the illness could be severe, she said.
Ardern said these people would have built some immunity from the illness itself, and as New Zealand had come down off the peak the need for passes changed.
The isolation period for household contacts remained at seven days, Ardern said.
On QR codes, she said there was no plan for New Zealand to contact trace more widely with the exception of high-risk environments like aged care facilities or residential facilities for the vulnerable.
QR codes use relaxed
From this weekend people would no longer be required to scan everywhere they went, and businesses were no longer required to provide the means to do so.
Ardern said businesses should stand ready to stand up QR codes again and people should not yet delete the app from their phone, in case of a new variant that evaded vaccines or was more deadly, in which case contact tracing would provide again a more critical role.
“Scanning has been a really important part of what we’ve achieved, so thank you for everyone for playing your part,” she said.
Finally, cabinet has also reviewed the role of vaccine mandates. As rates increased, they sought advice from Professor Sir David Skegg, who said the case for or against was now more finely balanced.
Skegg said: “Because of our relatively high vaccination coverage and increasing natural immunity as well as the apparent lowering of vaccine effectiveness of the omicron variant, while vaccination remains critically important in protecting New Zealanders from covid-19 we believe that several of the vaccine mandates could be dropped once the omicron peak has passed.”
The government will no longer require mandates for education, police and defence workforces and businesses operating vaccine passes from 11.59pm on April 4. They will continue to be used in health, aged care, corrections staff and border and MIQ workers.
Ardern said the government had also asked whether the mandates in the health sector could be narrowed, and expected to provide more updates on advice to the private sector on their use more broadly.
However, she asked people to still get vaccinated and boosted, saying it would continue to be central to the stability and strength of New Zealand’s recovery.
Looking back Ardern said that after two long years of living in a pandemic it was easy to lose sight of how far New Zealand had come.
“This exact day two years ago, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield announced from over at the Ministry of Health that we had 36 new cases of covid-19. Half at that time were from overseas travel, with the exception of the Queenstown World Hereford Cattle conference … we could contact trace 50 new cases a day back then. We hadn’t locked down yet, but the early signs were there.”
She said two new community cases were announced on 23 March 2020, one in Wairarapa with no link to the border.
Within days New Zealand was in a nationwide lockdown, a decision Ardern said was not a hard one.
“We had no other defence, no other way to protect each other. There was no vaccine, no antiviral medicines, there was very little data to tell us which public health restrictions worked and which did not, so we built our own defences and we hunkered down.”
The transition had not been easy but it had worked, she said. New Zealand successfully eliminated the first wave and recorded the lowest number of deaths in the OECD for two years in a row.
She said the response was also the best economic response, but while New Zealand had been successful “it was also bloody hard … everyone has had to give up something to make this work and some more than others”.
She said she imagined every family would have had a difficult conversation about vaccines, mandates or passes but among the different opinions there was also fatigue.
Ardern said New Zealand was now able to keep moving forward safely, but it had to be kept in mind that covid was here to stay.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said the surge in the community cases was expected and would continue to increase due to the transmissibility of the virus.
“However it is clinically proven, that promoting the practices of simple protective behaviours that can reduce risk to ourselves, our friends and families; such as staying home, to reduce contact, and adhering to the preventative health measures will help reduce new infections, and subsequently contain community transmission,” she said.
Fiame added that these were crucial components of Samoa’s national response to covid-19 which would support the Ministry of Health to undertake all necessary health measures to contain the spread of the virus and respond to cases requiring hospital care.
She said enhancing surveillance and maintaining high surveillance rates needed the rollout of the paediatric Pfizer vaccine for children 5-11 years old, expected to start in Savai’i this week.
Vaccination rollout
“And the continuation of the vaccination rollout for everyone including booster does once the bulk supplies arrive over next week.”
The Prime Minister said their message at the outset of the covid-19 national response is that vaccines are highly effective in protecting against severe disease.
Unfortunately, the tests conducted this week, showed that some had not even started their vaccination or completed their second vaccine.
“This is a concern,” said the Prime Minister.
Fiame said every phase of Samoa’s journey would present new difficulties but they must remain resilient and unified and accept that everyone contributed to maintaining the well-being and health of the nation.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says covid-19 case numbers have passed their peak in Auckland, the country’s largest city, but that people should remain vigilant.
He said the latest analysis showed covid-19 case numbers had passed their peak in Auckland, and were tracking down in all three district health boards.
Dr Bloomfield said that analysis also showed case numbers nationally — not including Auckland — were also slowing. They increased just 1 percent in the seven days to March 20, compared to a 44 percent increase in the week ending March 13.
The pattern did differ by DHB, with cases still increasing in the South Island, although there were encouraging signs they were peaking in the Midland region and in the Wellington region.
He said case numbers appeared to be largely now following the modelling for a high-transmission scenario. Case numbers were higher than the modelling suggested, and Dr Bloomfield said this may be because most cases in New Zealand were the BA.2 subvariant.
Hospitalisations in the northern region were also levelling off.
“We’re watching carefully and the expectation is that they will start to drop as the week progresses,” Dr Bloomfield said.
“The average length of stay for people on wards in the Auckland hospitals who have been discharged is now 3.2 days compared to just over two days last month, and the average stay in intensive care is five days.
“This increase in average length of stay reflects that we’re now seeing that people who are needing longer care, they may even be over their covid infection but they have symptoms that need to be managed, often from underlying conditions.”
Watch the update
Video: RNZ News
Dr Bloomfield said that even though cases in hospital in Auckland were staying high, the number of new admissions each day was dropping quickly. But because those being admitted now were sicker and required longer care in hospital, the total number of people in hospital remained fairly steady.
Emergency department admissions testing positive remain highest at Middlemore, but they had fallen from 40 percent last month to 28 percent now. Auckland Hospital was down from 30 percent to 22 percent, while Waitematā was steady about 18 percent.
Whangārei’s ED positivity rate was still increasing, he said.
“Admissions in the rest of the country are growing and we will continue to see them grow.”
Dr Bloomfield said hospitalisation rates during the delta outbreak was about 8 percent, whereas the omicron outbreak had been about 0.9 percent.
“That hospitalisation rate will appear to increase over coming weeks, because as the cases drop yet people remain in hospital we’ll see the denominator decline much quicker … hospitalisations will decline but more slowly,” he said.
“The number of deaths each day is also likely to increase and will take longer to decline.”
He said staffing shortages were a major pressure on the health system, and there was real pressure in hospitals as well as care in the community, including rest homes.
‘Covid isn’t done with the world just yet’ Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand could expect ongoing waves of covid, and looking across the Tasman was instructive.
“The number of people hospitalised with covid in New South Wales never dropped below 950 after their first omicron wave … it’s now back over 1000 as cases started to increase again.
“In contrast, in Victoria the number of hospitalisations declined down to around 200 and remained steady there … so two quite different pictures.”
He said this showed New Zealand should expect to see a residual number of cases and people in hospital.
The UK had seen increased case numbers with the BA.2 subvariant, with Scotland hit hardest.
“Case numbers there are just below their previous peak, and hospitalisation figures the highest they have been since 2020. Globally it’s likely there will continue to be further waves of omicron and likewise there will be new variants of concern.”
He said New Zealand would face these just as other countries would.
Ahead of the announcement, Dr Bloomfield said New Zealand was still in the middle of a global pandemic which had thrown curveballs before and would continue to.
“We need to be prepared to redeploy the measures that we already have in place or have used in the past.”
He said there was a balance between protecting the population — particularly vulnerable groups — and only using restrictions for the extent they were needed.
At the moment, total ICU and HDU beds were about 60 percent occupied, he said. Each day hospitals were looking at the number of beds available and staffing those accordingly.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Looking at the headlines this morning, you’d think COVID was all over. Sure, The New York Times tells us almost 30,000 new infections and more than a thousand deaths were recorded yesterday, but they do that every day now. The infection number is 33 percent lower than last week’s, a number with dual meanings: Be cheered by the decrease, and be shaken by how high the number is anyway, how high it’s been and for how long.
In truth, the only thing that’s really “over” with COVID is the wall-to-wall news coverage. It’s not over for the millions suffering from the multifaceted “long COVID,” which can linger for months in a variety of debilitating forms. It’s not over for the millions more whose health conditions force them to live in fear of the virus even after vaccination.
Kick over a few media rocks, and the “stealth variant” BA.2 comes crawling out into the daylight.
NBC’s local New York City channel 4, on Saturday: “Rising COVID infections associated with the so-called “stealth” omicron variant BA.2 are fueling fresh leeriness about the state of the pandemic in New York City and America, just as life as we now know it is starting to return to normal. According to the CDC, that variant accounts for 39% of COVID circulating in New York and New Jersey right now. By comparison, it’s responsible for about a quarter of new infections nationally. Its prevalence has doubled in just the last week or so.”
USA Today, also this weekend: “A new COVID variant is spreading across Pennsylvania, data released last week shows. In the past month, the BA.2 variant has gone from 3% of cases sequenced to more than 20%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Both articles are at pains to explain that we don’t yet know enough about BA.2 to adequately assess its menace at this time, but they go on to suggest it’s probably nothing to worry about right now. As with Delta and Omicron, no new precautions are being instituted; indeed, mask mandates and other protections are disappearing all across the country. Yet even after the twin debacle brought by those variants, the news seems resolutely determined to hold to a positive outlook as we watch the approach of this newest one, the first true test of the “living with the virus” method that capitalism has craved for two years now.
No lesser light than COVID expert Anthony Fauci popped up this weekend to join in the assurances, according to the Times:
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on the pandemic, predicted on Sunday an “uptick” in coronavirus infections similar to the current increase in Europe, despite the current decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States…. While anticipating a new rise, Dr. Fauci said that at this time he does not expect a surge. Still, the BA.2 subvariant has been shown to be a more contagious version of the Omicron variant, though it, too, causes less-severe illness in most people. Epidemiologists have said the current lull in U.S. cases mirrors the dip that Europe enjoyed before many officials in the region relaxed restrictions like indoor masking.
If Fauci proclaimed water to be wet, a segment of the population would drown in the local bog trying to prove him wrong. This is a fact of modern politics — the vast temptations of conspiratorial fictions over the long grind of scientific truth. Fauci has offered a level voice and a steady hand, for the most part, which is nothing short of remarkable given how often Donald Trump lit Fauci’s podium on fire with his cascading failure of an approach to the pandemic.
Not everyone who believes in Fauci is fully accepting of his prediction that the variant will merely cause an “uptick” instead of a “surge,” however. Benjamin Mueller of the New York Timesreports that “scientists and health officials are bracing for another swell in the pandemic and, with it, the first major test of the country’s strategy of living with the virus while limiting its impact,” adding:
The clearest warnings that the brief period of quiet may soon be over have come, as they often have in the past two years, from Western Europe. In a number of countries, including Britain, France and Germany, case numbers are climbing as an even more contagious subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, takes hold. In interviews, 10 epidemiologists and infectious disease experts said that many of the ingredients were in place for the same to happen in the United States, though it was unclear if or when a wave might hit or how severe it might be.
If/when BA.2 or another variant like it attacks with full force and causes yet another devastating round of deaths and economic hardships, our current “live with it” posture has left us thoroughly unprepared, again. This is particularly true after Congress cut $1.6 billion in COVID funding, to catastrophic effect:
Next week, the government will have to cut shipments of monoclonal-antibody treatments by a third. In April, it will no longer be able to reimburse health-care providers for testing, vaccinating, or treating millions of uninsured Americans, who are disproportionately likely to be unvaccinated and infected. Come June, it won’t be able to support domestic testing manufacturers.
It can’t buy extra doses of antiviral pills or infection-preventing treatments that immunocompromised people are banking on but were already struggling to get. It will need to scale back its efforts to improve vaccination rates in poor countries, which increases the odds that dangerous new variants will arise.
If such variants arise, they’ll likely catch the U.S. off guard, because surveillance networks will have to be scaled back too. Should people need further booster shots, the government won’t have enough for everyone.
Republicans believe they have gained the upper hand in the rhetorical fight surrounding COVID, particularly in regard to money allocated to fight the disease. To their minds, the country’s “So over it, you guys” mood is worth hanging their overall COVID strategy on.
We shall see, one way or the other, and that soon. “I think we’ve learned at this point to not underestimate what kind of sort of evolutionary leaps this virus can make,” University of Utah virologist Stephen Goldstein toldGrid. “We should be pretty humble about making predictions about what’s next.”
That cuts both ways, doesn’t it. Like a hot knife. Keep your eyes open, and don’t toss those masks just yet.
Samoa’s total number of active covid-19 cases has increased to 196 with the government confirming 192 cases in Upolu and 4 cases in Savai’i.
The Government Press Secretariat’s community transmission update, which was distributed to the local media today, advised that health authorities had identified 85 new community cases by 2pm Sunday.
The new community cases, when added to the 15 imported active cases, pushes Samoa’s total active cases to 196.
The Ministry of Health confirmed that a total of 2207 tests were carried out since 18 March 2022 in six designated covid-19 screening sites, in addition to tests conducted at health facilities.
Out of the 181 active community cases reported, 62 positive cases were confirmed from the six screening sites with 119 cases confirmed in health facilities.
The Red Cross Headquarters at Tuanaimato screening site has so far recorded the highest percentage of positive cases at 47 percent of total covid-19 positive cases confirmed, according to the Press Secretariat.
The ministry has also identified 428 close contacts who are currently under investigation.
Summary of cases
A summary of the statistics provided by the Press Secretariat is that there are 192 active cases in Upolu and 4 in Savai’i with both Manono-Tai and Apolima-Tai still recording zero cases since the first community case was recorded last Thursday.
Current active imported cases stand at 15 (including 3 frontline workers); active community cases total 181; while those currently in the isolation ward at the Tupua Tamasese Meaole National Hospital at Moto’otua total 11.
According to the Press Secretariat update, there are currently no covid-19 positive cases in the national hospital’s intensive care unit.
The number of community cases are expected to increase following the detection of the country’s first community case last Thursday.
The authorities are yet to ascertain where the individual picked up the infection, as she has been a resident in Apia and did not travel abroad after her arrival in Samoa.
On Saturday, the ministry uploaded an instructional video onto its official Facebook page to show families how they could safely manage home isolation for a family member who tested positive for covid-19 in their own homes.
Impact being felt
The publishing of this instructional video confirmed Samoa’s health apparatus was beginning to feel the impact of the rise in covid-19 cases and now sees home isolation as an alternative to managed isolation in hospitals.
Lalomanu District Hospital’s first community case, which was recorded on Saturday when a man went in and got tested to return positive results, is now in isolation at home with his family which include children.
Staff at the district hospital told the Samoa Observer that he got sick and began to show symptoms of covid-19 after his return to the village from Apia the previous weekend.
Alexander Rheeney is an editor (development) with the Samoa Observer. Republished with permission.
He told RNZ Morning Report that looking around the world other countries did not go straight up and down with their peaks and New Zealand would be at risk of “yo-yoing around” if vaccine passes and other public health interventions were removed too soon.
Vaccine passes should be retained until it was clear that the omicron outbreak was just about over, he said.
‘We’re at the top’
“We’re at the top at the moment. It makes absolutely no sense to remove any effective public health measures when we’re still at the top.
“It’s crazy. I think it’s political nonsense to be pushing to take them away now.”
Professor Jackson said more than 1 million New Zealanders still needed to get their booster. As well, the unvaccinated were twice as likely to catch covid-19, three times as likely to transmit it than fully boosted people and five times more likely to be in hospital.
“We’re not over it yet … those relatively small numbers of people, when you do all of those multiplications, they are sufficient to overwhelm our health system.”
He referred to what was happening in the UK and parts of Australia where there were rising case numbers.
“I know there’s huge pressure to take away the vaccine passes but I think it’s a mistake.”
Professor Jackson said it was business which forced the government to introduce vaccine mandates and he did not believe they were hugely in favour of taking them away now.
“I think this is politicking.”
Makes no sense
It did not make sense to change the traffic light setting in the next few days either.
“We’ve got more people in hospital today than we’ve ever had. We’ve got more deaths than we’ve ever had.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to be relaxing public health measures that have proven to be incredibly effective at the peak of an outbreak.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report that the traffic light system must be “no more restrictive” than needed and mandates would not be as necessary after the first omicron wave.
The changes will mark the biggest domestic shake up to covid-19 restrictions since omicron arrived on Aotearoa’s shores.
“We know that in the future we’re likely to have have additional waves of omicron… We’re already seeing that in other countries,” Ardern said.
“So let’s make sure we get the covid protection framework, that traffic light system, right for the future.
“We want it to be no more restrictive than it needs to be, so if there are areas we can pare it back, we will.”
She said that with a highly vaccinated population the government believed mandates and vaccine passes would no longer be as necessary once the omicron outbreak had peaked.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An Auckland nurse says a lucrative incentive payment has not fixed the city’s dire hospital staffing shortage in Aotearoa New Zealand’s current covid-19 outbreak.
Nurses, midwives and others employed by the region’s district health boards (DHBs) have been entitled to an extra $500 on top of their normal pay for extra shifts overnight.
The scheme is being reviewed today and the clinical director in charge of co-ordinating the city’s health response, Dr Andrew Old, said it would continue if it was needed to address staffing shortages.
Dr Old said going into the pandemic Auckland’s hospitals had about 15 percent staff vacancies across the board which meant starting from a challenging position.
“So you then layer on top of that the challenge of Covid and it really has stretched the city.”
A nurses’ union delegate at Waitematā DHB, Di McCulloch, said while the $500 incentive scheme was popular, it had not been good for nursing overall because it led to exhausted workers and did not fix the staffing problems.
She said the nursing situation was dire.
Influx of unwell patients
“We continue to have an influx of unwell patients that normally enter the hospital and this has been compounded by omicron.”
She said once the subsidy ends the nursing shortages will continue and the DHBs will continue to redeploy non-clinical staff to fill the staffing gaps in wards.
Dr Old acknowledged how tired hospital staff in Auckland are.
“You know this has been going on for two years and the intensity has really stepped up in the last couple of weeks and I think certainly the city and the country are incredibly well served by the professionalism of the health workforce.”
Dr Old said the $500 payment was being reviewed today and there was the potential for it to be extended.
It aimed to ensure staff were available, particularly for hard to fill shifts such as overnights, he said.
“Look, we recognise people are tired, we’re asking them to go above and beyond and it’s just a recognition of the fact that actually everyone is really stretched.”
Hospitals just managing
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton described the current situation as a crisis and said hospitals were only just managing.
“People are going above and beyond, they’re doing everything they can to keep it safe for patients, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a crisis, it doesn’t mean that the entrenched short staffing that we were trying to deal with before covid hasn’t made this almost impossible to deal with.”
It was not just Auckland and a lot of surgery and outpatient appointments were being cancelled around the country, she said.
McCulloch said the border closure had made the nursing shortages worse because in the past there had been a reliance on internationally qualified nurses (IQN).
“So it’s become an ongoing issue, this has been going on for years within nursing and the nursing voice are saying that we are tired, we are exhausted, we are short-staffed daily on the ground.”
But McCulloch said that had “not been heard by the powers that be”.
In terms of dealing with New Zealand’s ongoing nursing shortage, McCulloch said New Zealand needed to keep its new nursing graduates working here.
She said that could mean bonding newly qualified nurses to working in New Zealand for a minimum of two years.
Auckland hospitals put care on hold Auckland hospitals have put all but the most urgent care on hold to allow them to focus on covid-19 patients.
At the same time they are managing with 25 percent fewer staff as covid-19 cases continue to rise.
Dr Old said the region was grappling with peak hospitalisations and staff shortages due to the omicron outbreak.
“We’re in the eye of the storm now, so with cases thankfully coming down a bit but peak hospitalisations coinciding with near peak staff needing to be off to support their own family or off with covid themselves.”
But Dr Old said the number of staff vacancies due to covid-19 was starting to come down as coronavirus numbers start to drop and he was hopeful that things would improve this week.
He said there had been some limited cases of covid-19 positive staff working at Auckland hospital’s as the region dealt with the peak.
Serious challenges
“Those have been people where without them coming back we would have had serious challenges keeping those services going and so yes, coming back into environments where they’re only dealing with covid positive patients.”
Dalton said it was appalling to be in a position where in limited circumstances employers are encouraging staff unwell with covid-19 to go back to work.
“What they’re saying is they’re only doing that in covid settings and where otherwise there would be risk to life and limb effectively, so it’s a life preserving service.
“But to think that we’re in such a fragile state in terms of staffing that that has to be part of cover at the moment is really distressing.”
Dr Old stressed that urgent care was still available at the region’s hospitals.
“But anything that can be deferred essentially over the last couple of weeks really has been, so that’s pretty much all out-patient activity … and almost all planned surgery as well.”
Challenging to get support to South Auckland families Auckland Pacific health and social service provider The Fono said it was run off its feet keeping up with the demands of a community struck by covid-19.
Chief executive Tevita Funaki said the service was looking after more than 900 active cases at one time.
“It’s not just the health challenges but also the whole welfare support and food and also other needs of the families.”
The service also had a number of staff getting sick or isolating due to covid-19.
The Fono had been using the network of churches in the Pacific community to distribute what was needed for families, Tevita said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has reported 19,542 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 24 more deaths today.
The ministry said eight people had died with covid-19 yesterday, while a further 16 people had died in the past three weeks.
“Local public health authorities have notified these deaths to the ministry in the past 24 hours as part of changes to the reporting of deaths announced last week. Delays to reporting can be associated with people dying with, rather than of covid-19, and covid being discovered after they have died,” the statement said.
Tweeting an image of a rapid antigen test, Chris Hipkins said: “The faint line seems out of keeping with how I currently feel!
“Day 7 of isolation and now it’s my turn. So I’ll be clocking off for another 7 days. Take care out there everyone.”
The faint line seems out of keeping with how I currently feel! Day 7 of isolation and now it’s my turn. So I’ll be clocking off for another 7 days. Take care out there everyone. pic.twitter.com/9wt8u7oe3o
Hipkins would normally have fronted today’s covid-19 update, but the media conference has been cancelled for today.
MPs testing positive
Hipkins is the latest of several MPs to have tested positive, including Environment Minister David Parker, Police Minister Poto Williams, opposition National Party leader Christopher Luxon and National MP Simon Bridges.
In the ministry’s report today, a person in their 40s was one of the people with Covid-19 whose death was reported today, while another person was in their 50s. The others include four in their 60s, three in their 70s, eight in their 80s and six in their 90s.
Eleven were women and twelve were men. The ministry said the average age was 79 and this had been increasing over the last week.
Eight of the 24 deaths reported today were people who died at aged residential care facilities.
The total number of deaths of people with covid-19 is now 141.
The rolling seven-day average of deaths over the past seven days is seven, up from four yesterday.
The ministry said the trend of increasing numbers of deaths was sadly not unexpected.
Higher numbers
“As has occurred with omicron overseas, while covid-19 cases are usually seen in higher numbers among younger people early in the outbreak, over time the more severe and fatal consequences of the virus fall disproportionately on our older and more vulnerable populations.”
There are 971 people in hospital, 21 of whom are in ICU. The average age of the people with covid-19 in hospital is 57.
There were also 17 new cases identified at the border.
Asia Pacific Report adds: Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank was quoted in news reports as indicating the ethnicity of cases could increase the number of severe cases.
Māori make up about 17 percent of the 5 million population, but 20 percent of all cases, and 25 percent of those hospitalised, reports the New Zealand Herald.
Pasifika make up 8 percent of the population, but 21 percent of all cases and 38 percent of those hospitalised.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
With recent polling showing National edging ahead of Labour for the first time in two years, Jacinda Ardern’s previously strong support has eroded rapidly since winning a remarkable outright majority at the 2020 general election.
But the dip in electoral fortunes is only part of the story. It’s probably not an overstatement to say Ardern is presently one of the most reviled people in Aotearoa New Zealand, attracting vitriol that violates the bounds of normal, reasoned political debate.
During the recent illegal occupation of Parliament grounds, the apparent hatred was fully evident. There were ludicrous claims the prime minister is a mass murderer, and demands she be removed from office and executed for “crimes against humanity”.
Even on the supposedly professional social networking site LinkedIn, false claims that Ardern is a “tyrant” or “dictator” have been increasingly commonplace. For those making such claims, factual, constitutional, electoral and legal realities seemingly hold no weight.
So, what fuels these levels of antagonism? I suggest three factors are at play.
A protester with a fake arrest warrant in Christchurch. Image: The Conversation/GettyImages
Context matters How a leader is judged and what they can achieve is never simply a reflection of their individual characteristics and abilities.
Rather, as leadership scholars have long emphasised, the expectations of followers and the wider political, economic, social and historical context influence both how they are judged and their ability to achieve desired results.
In Ardern’s case, the public’s main concerns right now — food and fuel prices, rental and home ownership costs, and the effects of the omicron outbreak — are beyond the direct control of any political leader. Some will require years of transformative effort before significant improvements are seen.
A paradox of leadership is that while followers will often hold unrealistic expectations that leaders can solve complex problems quickly, they are also quick to blame leaders when they fail to meet those unrealistic expectations.
Ardern is caught in the maw of these dynamics, and that’s one of the factors fuelling the attacks on her.
Covid controversies The second obvious reason lies in the covid-related policies — including vaccine mandates, crowd limits and border controls — that have disrupted people’s lives and been heavily criticised by vested interests such as expat New Zealanders and various business sectors.
Anti-mandate protests, in particular, have become a front for wider anti-vaccine movements and extreme right-wing conspiracists. While the prime minister must balance restrictive policies with the greater public good, detractors are not bound by such considerations.
Ironically, by demonstrating a firmness of resolve to act in the nation’s best interest — something leaders might normally expect praise for, and for which Ardern has won international admiration — leaders become open to accusations of being inflexible and unresponsive.
Echoed by opposition politicians and some media commentary, these elements combine to feed a sense of growing frustration.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon … up in the polls and a good fit for traditionalist voters? Image: The Conversation/GettyImages
Old-fashioned sexism and misogyny But these first two factors alone, while significant, don’t explain the full extent of the violent and hateful rhetoric directed at Ardern, albeit by a minority. Rather, it’s clear this is rooted in sexist and misogynistic attitudes and beliefs, further amplified by conspiratorial mindsets.
Research shows both men and women with more traditional views desire “tough”, “bold” and “authoritative” leadership. A man displaying traditionally masculine behaviours, who is an assertive risk-taker, dominating and commanding others, is their ideal leader. This aligns with an assumption that women should follow, not lead.
Ardern’s emphasis on traditionally feminine ideals, such as caring for vulnerable others, and her strongly precautionary covid response run counter to what traditionalists respect and admire in leaders.
What’s known as “role incongruity theory” further suggests that Ardern jars with what traditionalists expect of “good women”. Overall, the sexism and misogyny inherent in these traditionalist beliefs mean Ardern is treated more harshly than a male prime minister pursuing the same policies would be.
Worryingly, the 2021 Gender Attitudes Survey (carried out by the New Zealand National Council of Women) showed such traditional views about leadership and gender are on the rise.
Traditionalist myths Insults and abuse commonly directed at Ardern on social media reflect the generally gendered nature of cyberviolence, which disproportionately targets women. These insults translate traditionalist beliefs into sexist and misogynistic acts.
Referring to Ardern as “Cindy”, for example, infantilises her. Calling her a “pretty communist” not only reflects the sexist and misogynist view that a woman’s worth is measured by her appearance, but also suggests her looks disguise her real aims.
This plays on the traditional trope of woman as evil seductress. From there it’s a short leap to the conspiracy theories that depict Ardern as part of an evil international cabal.
Unfortunately, for traditionalists and extremists alike, the evidence shows that effective leaders do not conform to their ideal or play by their rule book. Instead, they tend to be collaborative, humble, team-oriented and able to inspire others to work for the common good — qualities women often exhibit.
Of course, Ardern’s performance is not beyond criticism. But a fair-minded analysis, free from sexist and misogynist bias, would suggest the hatred directed toward her says more about the haters than Ardern.
New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says it is clear that the number of cases in Auckland is on the way down, but in Wellington case rates are increasing rapidly.
Dr Bloomfield and Chief Science Advisor Dr Ian Town held a media briefing on the Omicron response today.
Dr Bloomfield said there were 21,616 new cases of covid-19 in the community and 960 people were in hospital, including 22 cases in ICU or high-dependency units with two more deaths.
In the Northern region there were 559 people in hospital, with 40 percent — some 233 — aged 70 or over, he said.
Dr Bloomfield said the country saw higher case numbers compared to modelling from before the outbreak, but it was clear that the number of cases in Auckland is on the way down.
There were 6085 new cases in Auckland today, up from 4730 yesterday and 4509 on Sunday.
Dr Bloomfield says while admissions were on the way down, the total number of people in hospital with covid-19 was continuing to increase. Peak hospitalisations typically lagged behind peak case numbers by about a week.
Shift to subvariant BA.2
He said New Zealand had seen an interesting shift to the omicron BA.2 subvariant rather than the BA.1 variant. This could help explain why there were more transmissions than expected in the high-transmission scenario modelling.
However, this may be in New Zealand’s favour because other jurisdictions overseas — for example, NSW and the UK, particularly Scotland — were seeing second outbreaks with the BA.2 variant, having already had BA.1 variant outbreaks.
He said Scotland was seeing its highest case rate in nearly two years and had about 1800 people in hospital with the variant, compared to the under 1000 in New Zealand. Scotland has a population of 5.4 million, comparable to New Zealand’s 5 million.
Watch the update:
Video: RNZ News
Dr Bloomfield said it was important to make sure people were “vaxxed to the max”. He said this was a change in language — where the previously talked about term “fully vaccinated” was two doses, it was a shift to talking about being up to date with vaccinations.
He said it was clear that protection against getting omicron and/or being hospitalised wanes over time with just two doses.
A report from the Northern Region from March 8 showed just 16 percent of people admitted to hospital had their booster more than two weeks prior.
“So fully 84 percent of those people were not fully boosted … so even though only a small proportion of our population now has not had two vaccinations it is really really clear that a booster protects people from being hospitalised and we know it also helps protect people from dying from omicron.”
He said that in the same two weeks prior to March 8, just one person admitted to ICU was fully boosted.
Wellington outbreak Dr Bloomfield noted there was now a “pretty full on outbreak” in Wellington, with case rates increasing rapidly.
But he thought the outbreak in Wellington, including the Hutt Valley and Kāpiti Coast, had yet to peak.
There were 1584 cases in the Capital and Coast DHB catchment and 33 hospitalisations.
“I think the rate of increase is similar to what we may have seen in Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and others beforehand.’
Dr Bloomfield said the region with the highest case rate — per capita — right now was Tairāwhiti.
He said the DHBs (district health boards) had good plans in place, but when they had particularly high case numbers in hospital they did need to scale back some of their normal services.
He said some people were returning several negative RATs, but RATS were just “one tool” and not as accurate as PCR tests. He said people who had symptoms should assume they have covid-19.
Long covid Dr Ian Town talked about long covid. He said most people who developed covid recovered completely, but the term “long covid” was generally applied to people who continued to suffer effects for at least 12 weeks.
It can include low energy, fatigue, shortness of breath and cough, headaches, low mood, difficulty concentrating, cognitive impairment, ongoing chest pains, a racing pulse, joint pains, aches and pains, weakness in muscle, ongoing changes to sense of taste or smell, and poor quality of sleep.
Dr Town said there was no suggestion the symptoms of long covid were psychological symptoms, and the key thing was to pace yourself and accept that more rest may be needed.
There was no specific treatment, but it was thought to be part of a post-viral immune response and the approach to long covid was “very much a framework of rehabilitation and pacing yourself and not overdoing it”.
“There isn’t a magic bullet in terms of the recovery.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The covid-19 vaccine booster needs a rebrand in New Zealand because it sounds like it is an “optional extra”, says a Pacific public health expert, as worry rises about stalling rates.
Only 73 percent of people have had the vaccine booster, despite nearly 90 percent of eligible people being double vaccinated three months ago — the stand-down period required to get boosted – and the omicron outbreak is sweeping through the country.
University of Auckland public health Associate Professor Collin Tukuitonga and Associate Dean Pacific said the word “booster” could make the dose sound like an optional extra.
Two covid-related deaths were also reported taking the toll to 115 and there are 952 people in hospital, including 19 in intensive care.
The average age of people in hospital is currently 58.
Immunisation Advisory Centre medical director Dr Nikki Turner said the booster was far more effective at preventing serious illness from omicron than two doses.
All three doses should be considered as one full course of the vaccine, she said.
Unboosted people polled in the street by RNZ yesterday had a range of reasons for not getting a third shot.
Some said they got two doses because they had to for work but did not want the booster, another was that they were double vaccinated and had had the virus, and others said they intended to but had not got round to it yet.
Turner said there were many other reasons why there could be a lag, including some people only just being eligible after the three-month stand-down from the second vax, or others who had recently had the virus and were following advice to wait a further three months.
For some, like those living in poverty or in unstable housing, getting a vaccine could feel difficult, she said.
Immunisation Advisory Centre medical director Dr Nikki Turner … Image: Angus Dreaver/RNZ
But there was also almost certainly some vaccine fatigue.
“We’re certainly all getting covid fatigue so I think everyone is feeling over it to some degree,” Turner said.
“I think the problem is that even when we’re over this peak, we will still have a high background rate of covid for quite a long time.”
Associate Professor Tukuitonga said he was really disappointed in the rate, particularly for Pacific and Māori populations which were even lower with about 60 percent of those eligible boosted.
Grass roots organisations had been critical to getting their own communities double vaccinated to a high degree — and health authorities must give them the resources to do the same again for boosters, Dr Tukuitonga said.
Dr Turner said GPs and other health agencies needed to seek out and encourage individuals to get boosted, particularly older or more vulnerable people.
It was difficult at the moment because they were so stretched helping people who had the virus, but it was crucial to help keep those at risk safe, she said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was pleased the booster rate was higher for older New Zealanders — it is 90 percent for over-70s.
She appeared reluctant to mandate the booster, saying vaccine passes would soon have less of a benefit because so many unvaccinated New Zealanders were getting the virus.
But the government was working with the Ministry of Health to look at how to improve the uptake, she said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
It is too early to say New Zealand has peaked, and declining tallies are no reason to celebrate as covid-19 is still rife in our communities with a record eight deaths reported in a day, an epidemiologist says.
University of Auckland professor Rod Jackson said the coronavirus is occurring so frequently right now that anyone with covid-like symptoms can assume they have virus, unless they get a negative PCR test.
The reported cases are thought to be a fraction of the actual cases out there in the community, he said.
In the past three days, 22 people with covid-19 have died – nearly a 5th of the country’s total death toll of 113 since the virus arrived in New Zealand more than two years ago.
And while the number of people dying with the virus is a small percentage of those who test positive, the huge volume of people catching the virus at the moment means experts have warned there will be increasing deaths over the coming weeks.
So, early celebrations about a dip in case numbers are both premature, and rely on an incomplete picture of what is actually happening.
Yesterday was the fifth day in a row the Ministry of Health said recorded case numbers had declined, with 14,494 new covid-19 cases reported on Saturday, and the total number of infections dropping by 9000 to 197,251 people currently infected.
Dip marked for Auckland
The dip was especially marked for Auckland, which on March 8 reported 10,000 cases, but was down to 4509 yesterday.
Professor Jackson said from the data available, he could not tell if New Zealand and Auckland’s case numbers had peaked, or not.
“The cases can go up and down from day to day. The most important thing for all the people to realise is that we’re only reporting a quarter or a third of all the cases. So, if you’ve got 20,000 cases reported — there could be 40,000 to 60,000.
“I think it’s too early to call. I’d love to believe it’s on the decline in Auckland, it’s clearly still going up elsewhere, but I just don’t think we have any clear idea — we’re shooting in the dark because people are either not getting tested, or if they’re getting tested many of them are not reported, and the rate at which we report could change over time.
“So it is possible that in Auckland we’re still going up.”
Epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson … “it is possible that in Auckland we’re still going up.” Image: Nick Monro/RNZ
Professor Jackson points out covid-19 tends to run in ongoing waves, and since the start of the pandemic there had been ongoing waves throughout countries that had battled it around the world.
“We’re seeing it not just in NSW, we’re seeing it in most of Europe as well, we’re just beginning to see the numbers climb again.”
‘Too many restrictions lifted’
“I think governments have taken too many restrictions off too early. I think we’re going to see more waves of omicron — hopefully not as bad, but I’d strongly recommend that we keep some of the basic restrictions in place, the ones that are not too disruptive.
“Certainly masks in public places, certainly people should make an effort to keep their distance.”
It is vital that everyone who qualifies for a booster vaccine goes and gets one, he said.
“It’s by far the most important thing anyone can do – make sure they’re vaxxed to the max. Make sure you’re ready for it, you’re fully immunised.”
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker, told RNZ First Up today that protecting the older and more vulnerable parts of the community from exposure to the virus was important, to try to prevent deaths.
University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker … Photo: University of Otago, Wellington / Luke Pilkinton-Ching
About a million people have been slow getting their booster, he said, but the difference in immunity for those who had it could be lifesaving.
“We know that hospitalisations lag about seven to 10 days after the rise of cases, but unfortunately deaths lag even longer, three to four weeks, so we haven’t seen the peak of deaths yet.
10 to 20 deaths a day
“This may rise into that range of 10 to 20 deaths a day for several days, based on international experience.”
Professor Baker does believe there is rising evidence to say New Zealand’s case numbers may have peaked, with Auckland peaking about nine days ago, and the rest of the country about five days ago.
But he said it will take four to six weeks to flatten the high case numbers down.
“Remarkably, yesterday was the first day in six weeks where we saw a drop in cases in every DHB across New Zealand. Obviously you need a few more days to be sure that’s a pattern, but that’s looking positive.”
He said the figures could still sit around 5000 new cases a day for months.
Areas close to Auckland like Hamilton and Tauranga would not be too close behind, but the rest of the country was likely about a week and a half behind, he said.
Settling of numbers needed
Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said there needed to be a settling of the numbers before it could be declared that Auckland had peaked. But she was worried about what is happening in Europe.
Microbiologist Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles … Europe “had a wave and it dropped quite quickly and now it’s rising again.” Image: Dan Cook/RNZ
“They had a wave and it dropped quite quickly and now it’s rising again.
“We’re obviously going into winter and that really concerns me because as well as having covid, we’re also soon opening our borders, so we’re going to have more things like influenza coming in, so it could be a very difficult winter ahead and I think people really need to be preparing themselves for that,” she said.
“The other thing we have to remember is a lot of people who have been infected in this wave in New Zealand have been younger people, so if it moves from younger people into older age groups then we’re much more likely to see an increase in deaths.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
But University of Otago professor of international health Dr Philip Hill said international statistics for deaths showed that New Zealand’s number could easily have been in the thousands had the country not had high vaccination rates and effective pandemic restrictions.
“I think what we are seeing is just how wonderful a vaccine we’ve got, that we’re having a massive covid-19 outbreak and not experiencing huge numbers of deaths.”
Hill stressed it should be remembered that covid-19 was continuing to kill New Zealanders, and just like earlier variants omicron was a life-threatening disease.
But he said that with covid-19 so widespread some of the deaths in the death tally so far include people whose death occurred because of other causes, while they also had the virus.
“The classification of these deaths has not been complete for many of them, which basically means that there are significant numbers of people who are dying of something else and that coincidentally have covid-19. That can be quite tricky to tease out.”
However, Auckland health authorities remain cautiously optimistic that the omicron outbreak may have peaked in the country’s biggest city, and community case numbers in the region continue to slowly fall, with 6077 cases reported today — down from 7240 yesterday and less than half the number reported last week.
‘These are clearly seriously premature deaths’ Epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson of Auckland University urged older people to take the risk of covid-19 seriously as the number of deaths from the virus continued to rise.
Six of the 14 deaths in the past two days were people in their seventies.
Jackson said it was inevitable that the older population would feel the effects of the virus as it passed from kids to their parents and onwards.
But he said it was not just the oldest people in the community who were at high risk.
“These are clearly seriously premature deaths, this is not just old sick people who are going to die in the next few days, these are people who are losing years of a potential healthy life,” he said.
Stark wake-up call
Dr Jackson said the death toll in Hong Kong was a stark wake-up call for those writing it off as a mild illness.
“You just have to look at Hong Kong today; it’s a population of 7.5 million, so it’s only New Zealand plus a half, and they’re having well over 200 deaths a day. Their health services are overwhelmed. They’re in big trouble at the moment.”
Dr Jackson urged people to keep acting with caution to prevent the spread, and to seek medical advice if they were concerned about their health.
The death of anyone who dies within 28 days of testing positive for covid-19 is now reported.
This group is divided into three categories:
where covid-19 is the clear cause of death;
where there was another clear cause of death; and
where the cause of deaths is not known.
Deaths will mount
By Thursday this week, 34 people had died where covid-19 was clearly the cause, two people had died of another clear cause after testing positive for covid-19, and the deaths of 48 people with the virus did not yet have a clear cause, the ministry said.
As covid-19 cases mount, increasing numbers of deaths will also follow as people progress through the disease, the ministry said.
“It important to remember that each of these deaths represents significant loss for family and loved ones.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Auckland health authorities remain cautiously optimistic that the omicron outbreak may have peaked in the country’s biggest city, even though 601 of the 856 people in hospital with covid-19 are in Auckland.
Clinical leads Dr Andrew Old, Dr Anthony Jordan and Dr Christine McIntosh at the Northern Region Health Coordination Centre gave details today on the covid-19 response.
Five of the deaths were in Auckland, one in Waikato, and one in the Southern region, reports the Ministry of Health.
One person was in their 50s, four were in their 70s, one was their 80s, and one person was in their 90s. Four were male and three were female.
The number of people in hospital has also risen to a record 856 people, with 20 in ICU — including 10 in Auckland — and the total new cases today is 20,989.
The total number of publicly reported covid-19 related deaths is now 98.
“It highlights that although omicron is a mild illness for many people, for some it is not,” said Dr Old.
“Every death is a tragedy and our thoughts and condolences are with the families and loved ones of the people who have passed away.”
Cautiously optimistic
He remained cautiously optimistic about the situation in Auckland.
“Our three-day rolling average of cases is about 8500 per day, which is down from a peak of about 14,000.
“Today in Auckland was the first time since this started that we had fewer people in hospital with covid at 8am this morning than we did yesterday. One day is not a trend, but certainly that is the first time.”
At Counties Manukau, the number of people coming through the door at ED is lower than it was last week. It was too early to call it, he said, but there were some encouraging signs.
Dr Old said health services in some cases were managing on a day-to-day, shift-by-shift, or hour-by-hour basis.
“I would say that we are in a crunch at the moment, so a lot of our services are operating at what’s called minimum service delivery, so a lot of those sort of more routine, corporate type activities are being put on hold.”
He said authorities knew not every case had been detected, but there was good testing coverage, with about 15 percent of people enrolled with a GP in Auckland having been tested in the past fortnight.
Relatively young
The average age of people in hospitals is still relatively young, but as the total hospitalisations have risen, more older and vulnerable members have been affected.
Dr Old said this was a trend that matched those seen overseas, and omicron tended to have a long tail, with more vulnerable and older populations more likely to be affected towards the end of outbreaks.
“People need to remain vigilant to protect those in our families and communities who are at greater risk.”
He said it was a mild illness for most people but a more severe illness for other people you could pass it on to.
Another reason to remain vigilant is the problem of long covid, he said. What was known about long covid from other variants should give pause, he said.
He urged people to keep up mask use and good hygiene as it will make a real difference as we start to come out of the outbreak and beyond.
He said authorities were expecting hospitalisations to increase again this week and they have. As a percentage of current active cases this remains about 0.5 percent, and across the whole outbreak about 1.5 percent of cases have been treated in hospital.
Dr Old said that was likely to be an overestimate, because not all infections were being reported and counted.
‘We know it’s pretty tough out there’ Dr McIntosh said that in the peak of the outbreak the whole system was feeling the strain.
“We know it’s pretty tough out there and we know that you’re doing a phenomenal job.”
She said it was not just the staff in Auckland, it was the system and workers across the whole country who were supporting the health efforts.
She said it was important that people with severe or worsening symptoms to seek help and call 111 without delay.
“Your GP and healthline are there to help you if you need it … we would rather help and help you manage a worsening illness at the earlier stages than wait until someone is really dangerously ill.”
Dr McIntosh said there were pressures within GP practices and the primary care organisation leads were met with every day, and those issues are discussed.
“But indeed it is pretty stretched … the crunch is on.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Royal NZ College of General Practitioners president Dr Samantha Murton gave a briefing today on the government’s response to the omicron outbreak as hospital cases continued to climb.
The daily number of new community cases has dropped slightly today to 21,015 community cases, but the number of people in hospital with the coronavirus continues to rise, reaching 845.
There are now more people in hospital with covid-19 than at any other point over the past two years, the Ministry of Health said.
Speaking at today’s briefing, Dr Murton said 80 percent of GPs were now looking after more than 20 patients.
“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.
‘Huge amount of work’
“It has put a huge amount of work on general practice. When you think about the fact that there are 20,000 people who have got covid every day and across the country 50,000 consultations normally happen every day, that’s a 50 percent increase in workload if we had to deal with every one of those 20,000 that came through,” she said.
“My colleagues want me to remind everyone that we are working really hard, doing our best for our patients and although we are prepared and have done the best we can do for when the outbreak occurred, it is still going to be a little bit messy for the next couple of weeks.”
Watch the media briefing
Video: RNZ News
She said that was because there were people who wanted care and then people who needed care and were “quite vulnerable”.
Those vulnerable people will be the ones GPs are focusing on, she said.
“The other thing we have found is that across the country, people are stressed.
“People are stressed about having covid, people are stressed about being isolated, about not being able to go out, about having family members who might be sick and the practices are under pressure to provide as much care as they can and so that stress can often end up with a lot of anxiety and peoples’ emotions might flare, to put it politely.
“My colleagues have suggested people be kind to their providers.
‘Have a bit of patience’
“Please have a bit of patience as patients.”
She also put out a reminder that booster vaccine shots were the best protection people could get.
Auckland hospitals have reported that they are dealing with far more covid-19 cases than even their worst case scenarios predicted, with daily case numbers as high as 533 across the city’s hospitals this week.
In Wellington, frontline care workers are operating around the clock to help the more than 17,000 people across the region who are isolating at home and in need of some level of assistance.
Canterbury District Health Board is already teetering on patient capacity, three weeks away from an expected peak of covid-19 cases.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins has announced that the isolation period for covid-19 cases and their household contacts is reducing to one week, down from 10 days, from tomorrow.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health (MOH) has yet to inform the public on when, where and how the first person outside quarantine contracted covid-19 in the country’s first case of community transmission.
Acting Director of Public Health Jenny Stephen, said during a media conference that she could not give an update on this issue as this was yet to be determined.
However, she confirmed that the case is in quarantine and has mild symptoms only or asymptomatic, which was not severe.
As of Monday, 48 of the 120 close contacts of the first confirmed case had been sent to quarantine. Others were being traced and would also be isolated.
Acting Director Stephen said the quarantine expenses for the close contacts would be covered by the ministry through the emergency funds.
The Minister of Health, Bruno Leingkone, said the government would be increasing the number of quarantine facilities to accommodate close contacts and positive case.
Currently, some people are told to self-isolate at home due to insufficient space in quarantine, said Acting Director Stephen.
“They are advised to stay isolated until it is safe, and they should be following covid-19 protocols while isolating,” she said.
RNZ Pacific reports that Vanuatu health authorities have confirmed their first case of community transmission of covid-19, saying there are a total of 58 covid cases in the country and 10 of them are in the community.
Minister Leingkon said the community cases were discovered over the weekend after the Member of Parliament for Port Vila constituency, Anthony Yauko, had tested positive.
Anita Robertsis a Vanuatu Daily Post journalist. Republished with permission.
The United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has raised its travel advisory warning on travel to New Zealand.
The CDC updated its travel warning to “level four: very high” for travel to New Zealand due to covid-19 cases, of which today alone there was 23,894 new cases recorded.
According to the Reuters’ Covid-19 tracker, covid-19 infections are decreasing in United States, with 49,611 new infections reported on average each day.
The CDC states if people must travel to New Zealand they should ensure they are up-to-date with their covid-19 vaccinations.
The health warnings are determined by the “level of covid-19 in the country or other special considerations”.
Many countries have been rated with a level four risk warning by the CDC, including Australia. Hong Kong and Thailand were also added to the list today.
In addition there are 756 people in hospital with covid-19 and 16 of those are in ICU. The seven-day rolling average of community cases is 18,669, up from yesterday.
Of the new cases, 596 were confirmed via PCR testing and 23,298 via rapid antigen tests (RATs).
At the covid-19 update today, Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said the actual number of cases in the community was expected to be considerably higher, but that was hard to gauge when using RAT as the primary test.
That was why the ministry was focusing on hospitalisations, McElnay said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Twenty-eight of the anti-public health protesters who occupied New Zealand’s Parliament grounds over the past month have now tested positive for covid-19.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said 11 district health boards had reported covid-19 cases from the protest, including Wairarapa, Waitematā, Waikato, Taranaki, Southern, MidCentral, Tairawhiti, Hutt Valley, Counties Manukau, Capital and Coast, and Canterbury.
“These people are thought to be protesters, although they have not been interviewed as they would have been prior to the recent changes in case investigation,” the statement said.
“In phase 3 [of the Omicron response], cases are not routinely interviewed by health officials and are instead asked to fill out a contact tracing form.
“Only cases that are identified through their interaction with the health system can therefore be identified as having attended the protest.”
The ministry is urging all those who were at the 23-day occupation to get tested and vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Wellington City Council said most of the remaining protesters seemed to have left the capital over the weekend, except for a group at Mahanga Bay who were not on council land.
Work was well underway to remove rubbish, deep-clean, and repair damaged roads, street lights and sewer pipes, it said.
The Department of Conservation said there were no protesters left at its Catchpool Valley campsite in Remutaka Forest Park, which was now closed for cleaning.
Wellington City Council has repairs and a clean-up underway of Parliament grounds after the 23-day occupation by protesters ended. Image: Wellington City Council/FB/RNZ
Christchurch library shuts for two hours over protesters In the South Island, Christchurch central city library shut for almost two hours this morning when 40 protesters who were stopped from entering refused to leave.
A council spokesperson said Tūranga was closed after a warning that a group linked to the Freedom and Rights Coalition might protest there.
The council was not considering increasing security staff in response to the incident.
A police spokesperson said the 40-strong group was refused entry to the library because they did not have vaccine passes.
Police arrived at the library, where the group stood outside for a while before leaving, but no one was arrested or trespassed from the building.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
