The strain on hospitals and emergency departments appears to be growing as a top doctor warns they are facing a "perfect storm" of winter illness and Covid-19 cases.
Photo: LDR / Stephen Forbes
Australasian College of Emergency Medicine spokesperson Dr John Bonning said hospitals are full and emergency departments overflowing.
Listen to Australian College of Emergency spokesperson Dr John Bonning and Dr Christine McIntosh, clinical director for Whānau HQ, the home isolation service for the northern region health centre, on Nine to Noon
He told Nine to Noon winter illnesses were already putting pressure on hospitals alongside Covid patients.
"We've kind of got a perfect storm of the beginning of winter, winter ailments, respiratory viruses that we have not been exposed to for a couple of years, the tail-end of Covid, although it's a pretty wicked tail in terms of number of cases."
Added to that was "staff burnout, staff resignations and staff absences due to winter illness".
Dr Bonning said all those factors were contributing to very full hospitals and overflowing emergency departments.
Hawke's Bay Hospital has revealed it has 33 people in hospital with influenza, three of them are pregnant women and one of them is in intensive care. The number of hospitalisations has risen sharply from 10 in hospital on Monday.
Dr Bonning said hospitals were starting to see some people with influenza A and B coming into hospital, although currently the volumes are nothing like the numbers coming in with Covid-19.
"Relatively sick young people with this influenza, but it's not sort of in massive quantities, but it is a virus that's going to make a few people a lot sicker than they have been before because they haven't been exposed to it for a few years."
Anyone who was in at at risk patient group or who is a healthcare worker should get a flu shot, Dr Bonning said.
"We're seeing people present, they're quite short of breath, they've got very fast pulse rates."
Anti-viral drugs did not work very well for influenza and medical professionals relied on people's natural immunity which could be boosted by immunisation.
Some of the spread of influenza would be reduced by mask wearing and the fact that people do not go out if they are feeling unwell, he said. It may be worth looking into providing free flu shots for everyone, although it would be important to do the maths before deciding how to allocate health funds.
The stress that hospitals were under at the moment was predictable, he said.
"The stress and strain that hospitals are under at the moment is not actually due to Covid, Covid is a little bit of additional pressure, it effects the way we service patients as they come through because we've had to realign into hot and cold zones in emergency departments, in hospital we're testing everybody, but this has all been coming for the last decade or more - and you know these numbers were entirely predictable."
Vaccination numbers for a number of other illnesses such as measles and meningitis have dropped off in the last few years, Dr Bonning said.
He said the devastation that low measles vaccination rates can cause was evident in Samoa when at least 83 people, most of them children, died as a result of the outbreak.
Dr Bonning said it was vital to improve vaccination rates in New Zealand.
"There's some issues with people concerned about vaccine mandates, but childhood vaccination really is a no-brainer when you see the impact of measles on an unvaccinated population in Samoa, you really would have to get your children vaccinated, I would suggest."
New Zealand had generally had great Covid-19 vaccination rates but he agreed that the campaign has somewhat eclipsed vaccinations for other illnesses, he said.