Hello to all, after such a quiet period.
It again has been lack of time rather than lack of comment. The swine flu response means that work has been getting in the way on life, with late finishes, fatigue, and poor sleep. The response up until this point has been “keep it out” and “stamp it out”. with border control, tracing of symptomatic travellers, and their isolation and their treatment, andf then cluster control with treatment of cases and isolation of their contacts. Spread within NZ was and is inevitable, and we in Wellington showed community transmision first, by going to look for it. The main focus was on travellers, and so if you only test travellers, then you will only see cases in travellers…..
So the Ministry has now moved to managing the epidemic, which from the perspective of the frontline in Wellington is no before time. It appears there was an unwillingness to acknowledge the presence of community spread, and so delay in moving on with the respnse, and so pushing the frontline, already under stress of limited resources, fatigue, and sense of futility, too far.
So things have changed, and I am due to move on. It has been an worthwhile experience, and enlightening, but thankfully I have some time to finish off other work before I enter the doors of the Ministry of Health.
More news soon.
