Virus all around, so party outside
The pandemic is not over. Every single infection or reinfection can lead to an increased risk of heart problems, strokes, blood clots, long Covid, and death. We need to be taking this seriously. Despite Aotearoa New Zealand being in the middle of a surge, public health messaging is scant and limited data is being gathered on infection prevalence.
The royal commission’s terms of reference ‘‘to prepare New Zealand for future pandemics through lessons learned from Covid-19’’ don’t include the period post-October 2022, which is disappointing. The commission will not consider this phase of the pandemic during which many New Zealanders will be affected.
Aotearoa New Zealand has no data on Covid-19 infection prevalence, including rates of reinfection.
Reported reinfections are climbing over 30% and continue to rise. This is important as we have no understanding of how prevalent asymptomatic infection is and whether infections carry similar risks of health harms. In the absence of data there is no way of assessing the health risks for Ma¯ori and Pasifika communities, young people and children and the elderly and clinically vulnerable.
There is growing evidence that reinfections create greater cumulative health risks such as long Covid, heart issues, neurological impacts, and diabetes. There are also growing concerns that Covid-19, even when mild, may increase vulnerability to subsequent infections such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza (flu) and streptococcus A (strep throat) infection.
More research is needed to understand ongoing health risks, including collecting data on infection prevalence, the variants and subvariants circulating and reinfection rates. It is going to be quite some time before the impacts of the virus on the population are known. It is not possible to prepare an appropriate public health response without data.
Infection and seroprevalence (antibody) data is now needed as this will give scientists the information required to understand the complex nature of the immune responses relating to infection and reinfection and variants of concern. Can we afford to keep waiting when there are tools available to reduce health harms? Scientists have been calling for it to get under way for six months.
We need to step up a public health campaign to inform people to take steps to avoid Covid-19. We should be pushing public health messaging to encourage use of all the tools, masking, vaccination, and ventilation. It’s summer, so let’s party outside!
People need to do everything that they can to protect themselves from being reinfected. It’s not just about avoiding risks of long Covid. It’s about the cumulative risks of other long-term health problems over time.