Strained systems are no surprise
We might think we are done with Covid, but Covid is not done with us. There is a view that the wider New Zealand public is bored with the pandemic and barely paying lip-service to the most basic of health measures, the wearing of the mask and the occasional sanitising of the hands.
As our borders with the world are more closely restored to their early 2020 state, with pre-departure testing disappearing for all international visitors from Monday, we instead celebrate the happy coincidence of major snowfalls and a fresh influx of tourists.
Of course that is good news for a struggling tourism and hospitality sector, and it can be argued that predeparture tests outlived their usefulness. But there seems to be cognitive dissonance at work as well.
The Ministry of Health is still reporting a daily average of around 5000 cases. Yesterday’s total was 4869, with 370 hospitalisations, including nine in ICU, and 16 deaths of people who had been Covidpositive within the previous 28 days.
The health and education systems have has a double whammy of Covid-19 and winter flu. The overloaded hospitals and emergency departments we were warned about are already here.
Two tragic recent cases stand out as emblematic. Stuff has reported on a Wellington woman who suffered a stillbirth at 20 weeks of pregnancy but was forced to carry the dead baby for a further two days before she could be induced, due to staffing shortages at Wellington Hospital.
At Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, a woman with a severe headache was told she could not be seen for eight hours. She left, but suffered a brain haemorrhage and died, which could have been prevented, a doctor said. Middlemore is under particular strain, with its emergency department seeing around 400 people per day. A health worker, speaking before the recent tragedy, described the situation as ‘‘frightening’’.
The spread of Covid and influenza means patient numbers are up, while staff numbers are down, with widespread absences due to sickness, forcing remaining staff to work longer shifts and prioritising emergencies over planned care. A perfect storm is made even worse by a longpredicted nursing shortage. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation has warned more people will die if this is not addressed.
The Ministry of Health released a statement at the start of the month, urging New Zealanders ‘‘to look after their health and to do their bit to reduce pressure on the health system through what will be a challenging winter’’. That was a sign of an overloaded system handing the responsibility back to an already stressed and unwell public.
Absentee numbers among teachers and teaching support staff don’t have fatal consequences but are causing major disruptions in primary and secondary schools throughout the country. Some teachers and education leaders are adamant that mask mandates in schools were lifted too soon. Like nurses, relief teachers are also in short supply.
In terms of the larger pandemic narrative, we might even wonder whether the crisis we have seen in hospitals qualifies as an overwhelmed health system, which was a key criterion of the red light setting we abandoned in April. Was that reset premature?
But the wisdom of hindsight has to wrestle with the reality that many of us were clearly and openly tired of the restrictions, especially the vaccine mandates that were deeply and politically unpopular in some quarters. If we went quickly from the so-called hermit kingdom to the ‘‘let-it-rip’’ kingdom, the consequences should not have surprised us.