Rural towns the most at risk
As the West Coast grieves the country’s first coronavirus death, an expert warns that rural areas can expect to be hit the hardest.
The patient, a woman in her 70s, died on Sunday at Grey Base Hospital in Greymouth.
University of Otago Associate Professor Garry Nixon says better reporting of cases is needed.
‘‘Of all the geographic categories in New Zealand, residents of rural towns have the lowest socioeconomic status,’’ he said.
New Zealand’s rural towns have higher levels of chronic disease, more elderly people, higher Ma¯ori populations and poorer access to health services, he said.
‘‘It’s no secret that our rural health services are under-staffed.’’
The 21 staff who treated the West Coast woman are now selfisolating.
‘‘Imagine what it’s like in Greymouth right now with the number of staff being taken out of their health service, in an already stretched service,’’ Nixon said.
The Ministry of Health needed to provide more precise information about exactly where the cases were being found, he said.
‘‘The ministry has been slow to report cases in a granular geographic basis. If the local health service doesn’t know rates of the virus growth in their community, how can they plan for it?’’
In Otago and Southland, they knew how many total Covid-19 cases had been confirmed, but not where they were, Nixon said.
It would be helpful for communities to know the confirmed Covid-19 rates within their isolated areas, he said.
‘‘That will probably be one of our major concerns – to get really good granular reporting happening as soon as possible.’’
There had been a ‘‘surprising’’ number of early Covid-19 admissions happening in regional hospitals around the country, he said.
The family of the West Coast woman have no idea how she became infected. Nixon said tourism to small towns and people travelling to rural areas to selfisolate could be to blame.
Rural towns also have a higher Ma¯ori population, and Nixon said the virus would hit them hard. In the 1918 influenza pandemic, the second wave killed about 9000 in less than two months.
‘‘The mortality rate for Ma¯ ori was as much as eight times higher than for non-Ma¯ ori.’’
Victoria University of Wellington clinical psychologist Dr Dougal Sutherland said the fact that the death occurred on the West Coast may further underline the crisis.
‘‘If the death was in Auckland then some may have been able to dismiss it as being related to ‘others’ and not ‘us’.
‘‘But this woman was ‘us’. Not a foreign tourist nor someone returning from overseas. Covid19 is here and it is real.’’