Chinese counterparts share virus experiences with DHB

DESPITE the possibility of a major Covid19 outbreak in the South now being low ‘‘we should still be prepared’’, Southern District Health Board chief medical officer Nigel Millar says.

In April, Dr Millar led Southern clinicians through a ShanghaiSouthern New Zealand Covid19 prevention and control videoconference with Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention deputy director Sun Xiaodong and Xu Jinfu from Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital.

The experts from Dunedin’s sister city answered questions on issues including tracing suspected cases, testing asymptomatic carriers, improving diagnostic accuracy, enhancing personal protective equipment (PPE) and evaluating cytokine storm.

‘‘It was useful to hear directly from senior people involved in the first and very intense response to Covid19. Their views on clinical care were useful and will help us plan for the possibility of a major problem with Covid19,’’ Dr Millar said.

Southern District Health Board chairman Dave Cull said while not offering criticism of the response in the South, the Chinese experts offered a different perspective.

‘‘The thing that sticks out, when they asked about PPE, and the Chinese experts said, ‘What we have seen in photos, we don’t think your PPE is up to what we would expect the standard to be’ — they said it was too loose fitting.’’

Dr Millar said the public health team had done an ‘‘outstanding job’’ in the South.

However, in response to questions from the Otago Daily Times yesterday he confirmed ‘‘asymptomatic cases could be a problem’’.

‘‘But on the other hand currently we have no evidence of recent community spread of infection.’’

He said authorities continued to test ‘‘actively to seek out any evidence of community spread’’.

Asymptomatic cases that were recorded usually arose during the screening of contacts of known cases.

The proportion of Southern cases that were asymptomatic was about 3%, he said.

‘‘The number of people who are truly asymptomatic is not known and we will only find this out when we can do antibody testing, which involves a blood test for antibodies that indicate a past infection,’’ Dr Millar said.

Those tests were still under development.

The first case of Covid19 was recorded in January.

The official staterun press agency of China, Xinhua, this week reported there had been 306 ‘‘imported cases’’ of Covid19 in Shanghai and no new locally transmitted cases as the municipality of about 25 million people had reported 339 locally transmitted confirmed cases by Tuesday, including seven deaths.