Colds, flu will be tougher to fight this year

Southern hospitals are already limiting surgeries and the Southern DHB is warning the situation is going to get worse as winter illnesses start to kick in.

The imminent border reopening means more people are likely to become severely unwell from general ‘‘winter ills’’ at a time when hospitals are struggling to balance planned care with emergency needs and staff are exhausted.

Southern DHB chief operating officer Hamish Brown said Southland and Otago had not really come off the first Covid-19 wave and hospitals were already planning for the second.

The DHB is asking people not to come to the emergency department unless people really need to.

Southern DHB medical officer of heath Dr Susan Jack said besides influenza and ‘‘hundreds’’ of daily Covid-19 cases, it was a matter of time before RSV arrived in the south.

When the borders reopen, there’s a chance that whooping cough and measles could make a comeback.

The latter was very infectious and could spread rapidly once it was in the community, Jack said.

But even colds and fu will be tougher to manage this year.

Jack explained that all cold and flu viruses continually mutated and under normal circumstances, immune systems built up tolerance to new strains as they evolved.

A lack of new strains in New Zealand meant Kiwis’ bodies had not encountered new mutations for some time, and they would look very different to their immune systems which would have little previous experience of how to fight them.

Brown said hospital occupancy rates were already high and most of the patients being admitted were in their 80s and fighting respiratory viruses.

Operations teams were working day-byday and week-by-week to ‘‘manage as best we can,’’ transferring patients across the district where this was needed and possible, he said.

Screening procedures to keep patients, staff and visitors safe were adding an extra layer of time and complexity, Brown said.

As a result, hospitals were focusing on acute and emergency surgery and plugging theatre time with day cases where possible.