Nurses working at managed isolation facilities across the country have raised concerns about staff shortages and instability.
.. The ministry said the matters have been addressed – but many health care professionals working at border facilities disagree.
In a peculiarly bizarre way this is somewhat comforting.
When entropy reigns supreme, and it seems there is nothing and no one who can be trusted there's our systemically dysfunctional Ministry of Health reliably doing what we all know they do best.
Denying, minimising, dismissing and generally disrespecting those at the front line and at the coal face.
In a statement to RNZ, the ministry confirmed all matters identified in the audit had been followed up and addressed.
But that is rejected by two of the country's largest nursing unions, which have hundreds of members working in MIQ facilities.
oh well if only we had a caring and gentle government that has a clear majority to get stuff done.
The problem is not the 'Ministry' the problem is the government. And it seems that the Labour Government is even less inclined to work for their wages then the National Goverment.
I spoke with a nurse a few month back who laughingly stated that the new ventilators had arrived in the country – thanks god – now if we could just train and hire and pay the nurses to man and monitor these ventilators.
Surely any day now – any day now, our Labor overlords are gonna do something about something. I can see someone write an article about how all this time was squandered by people who yet don't suffer the consequences of their actions.
Except, this isn’t BAU and MoH is not the only Ministry involved in MIQ.
From your link:
Dr Sally Roberts is a clinical microbiologist at Auckland District Health Board and an advisor to the Covid-19 taskforce.
She said everyone was working hard to keep staff and returnees safe – and while facilities were steadily improving, it was important to remember they were newly established entities.
"Prior to 2020, we didn't have managed isolation quarantine facilities of this nature, and they involve multiple agencies working together who haven't had a working relationship in the past, and the facilities are not designed for managing individuals with infectious diseases, so it's been a big learning curve."
It is important to keep the pressure on and the nurses unions, epidemiologists, and other experts are doing a good job at that and in sticking up for their members at the same time. However, the RNZ article was more balanced and the situation appears to be less B & W than your comment suggested 🙂
I think it is important to keep in mind that nobody has the perfect answer/solution/approach and that the situation with Covid is always evolving and changing.
With respect, Incognito, I assume that folks who visit here are more than capable of reading a linked article in its entirety and form their own opinions.
Twenty years of having to deal with the Ministry of Health and its agents over disability issues has left me cynical and disillusioned. Health is about people…and unfortunately our Ministry of Health, as a bureaucracy, seems to forget this basic premise.
The Ministry has form. For years they denied, dismissed and minimised the abuse and neglect of disabled people in MOH funded residential care. Look up the 2013 articles by Kirsty Johnston.
At the same time the Ministry declared open warfare against those people with significant disabilities and the family members who they had chosen to provide the high level of care they need. Or they had no option (other than the potential horrors of residential care) than to have resident family provide the care…because the Ministry of Health refused to fund the advanced personal cares required.
Despite the issue of paying family carers having been heard many times in various legal settings over the past two decades (with our side winning with embarrassing monotony) it was only in April last year, and under 'special' Covid conditions, that my partner has been allowed to pay me as his carer. And we have been reminded by the Ministry this is temporary. Goddess forbid we should ever feel secure.
A quick search on the Natrad webpage and you'll find numerous articles (Many by Catherine Hutton) describing the deep despair of disabled people and their families. Nothing changes for the better because of the culture of the Ministry.
I spent a while over New Years speaking with a midwife. Again, the good folk at Natrad have also kept track over the years as the midwives have battled to gain some level of respect from the funders… the Miserly of Health.
And this midwife was using the same language and expressed the same deep despair that we in the MOH disability community have voiced.
And I'm hearing that same tone from these nurses.
But this time, with Te Virus scratching at our borders, the risks if the Ministry runs true to form will impact the whole community.
You’d be surprised how many people don’t read any further than a headline 😉
When people read your comment, they may or may not decide to read the linked article, based on your PoV. BTW, this is exactly why tend to insist on links and a brief accompanying commentary as to what to expect and as to why people should read it.
Your views of MoH are well documented here and you have your reasons.
I make no apologies for presenting my take on the same article to which you linked. This does not take away anything at all from your personal experiences of and with MoH. It is about presenting another perspective on the content of the article and a number of voices therein, including those of some nurses, not on MoH as such.
And yet despite the nurses union bringing this up (and I don’t doubt their concerns, after all who would want to be working at the border), we still have to date no community out break and the times we have it has been very swiftly contained. So time to admit moh doing a lot that is right.
it is worrying though about the new mutation. Only a matter of time before another outbreak. Trust our health people it manage it, but will likely mean another location
Prior to the more infectious strains the MoH was able to manage Covid – 19. Looking at overseas tends with the newer highly infectious strains I do not have the same level of confidence when it comes to containing a community outbreak.
Hypothetical exchange between Senior Management at a MIQ facility and a Senior Level Bureaucrat at the MOH.
MIQ…."We really need more staff at all levels…."
MOH…."But you're all doing so well! There's absolutely NO community transmission! It's obvious we've got this! Keep it up team!"
MIQ…"But we're all so tired. We've all been at this for months. We need to train up many more people so we can have a break. Some at the frontline are so scared of making a mistake because of exhaustion that stress levels are through the roof. Please approve more funding for more staff."
MOH…. "Look guys…we get this is all very new…but its clear we have hit just the right note here. We don't need to go overboard. All those little niggles that you guys had last October have been dealt to. Look at the paperwork …we have an Action Plan!"
Their job is working with samples that are presumed to be dangerously pathogenic at all times, not just when there's a pandemic going on. So they've got the mindset, skills and equipment to keep themselves safe.
(Being purposefully vague to protect the guilty) there was fairly recently a non-medical biohazard facility that was close to losing certification because it had a lot of students screwing up the lab's integrity. Things like opening windows when the air is supposed to be filtered before going back outside, or not wearing lab coats so they're taking stuff outside on their street clothes.
And storing radium in a draw in the laboratory. My cousin who worked at the DSIR Physical Engineering Laboratory in Gracefield tells of the time they were doing a clean-up in the late 50's when they opened a draw they seldom used and found at the back a large sample of radium (I've forgotten how many curies were written on it). He initially worked for Sir Ernest Marsden as a lab tech.
Bit off topic – a question in a recent quiz in ‘The Listener’ reminded me of the once common enough practice of using X-ray Shoe Fitter, Pedoscope and Foot-o-scope devices in shoe shops.
The first scientific evaluations of these machines in 1948 immediately sparked concern for radiation protection and electrical safety reasons, and found them ineffective at shoe fitting.
In 1999, Time placed Shoe-Store X Rays on a list of the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century.
A very bad idea, but oddly enough one that didn't trigger an epidemic of foot cancer either. If there was any radiation harm caused by them, it's buried in the statistical noise.
Besides that wiki article bases it's case on the now very shakey Linear No Threshold (LNT) thesis originally put up by Muller in 1927. While it may have been a useful idea in the early days of nuclear radiation, being the most conservative model possible and could have been justified as a 'precautionary principle', all the real world data since has strongly suggested that in fact all living creatures are constantly bathed in a background radiation that does us no harm at all.
Indeed there are a number of cases where people have lived with substantially higher background radiation levels over long periods, and surprisingly show reduced levels of cancer.
No-one has been able to prove a watertight case either way (nor given the nature of the RCT necessary are they ever likely to), but there are good grounds to think that the LNT thesis is far too conservative and generates perverse outcomes.
That is interesting; how on earth did you stumble on that?
You do ask a really worthwhile question; how to tell the difference between a useful result and 'covid bandwagon'. After all a decent RCT trial to put the matter beyond all doubt is simply not going to be available in most cases. Demanding this level of gold standard proof is not always reasonable.
A good comparison can be made with the case made against tobacco smoking and lung cancer, that never rested on anything more than historic observation studies and correlations as far as I’m aware. I doubt anyone ever did a full noise RCT on this (although I could always be wrong).
As time goes on we continue to learn more about COVID, and we find all manner of interesting aspects like the probable role that Vitamin D, Zinc, and Selenium may play. The jury remains noisily deadlocked on Ivermectin, and I'm sure there a few other plays out there I'm unaware of.
One point I need to clarify; it's perfectly possible to be both alarmed at the threat of this disease and at the same time alarmed and disappointed at some of the responses by various medical authorities and governments.
More than anything else we need to stop politicising this; it was a catastrophe for the climate change issue, and will play out no better on this.
For all practical purposes, yes, all asbestos is harmful. Your mat was probably made with chrysotile (white asbestos), which is the most common and least hazardous form of asbestos. But that "least hazardous" is kinda like saying ebola is less hazardous than rabies.
The really dangerous route for it to cause harm is when it get turns into dust and you breathe it in. So your mat for hot pots is lowish risk, unless you were in the habit of banging it against a post at about head level to get dust out of it, like a rug.
If it's not getting turned into dust, then it's low risk. That's why the advice is if your house has asbestos in the walls or ceiling or roof, don't worry about it unless you disturb it somehow. Like doing renovations, or cleaning an asbestos cement roof. Then you need the $$$$$ expert$$$$$ to come and deal with it.
Nasal/oral swabs don’t exhale, sneeze or cough on the lab workers. The actual sample is stuck in and onto the bud, which is how it has been designed to work. Unless the lab worker licks their gloved fingers, sucks the bud, or sticks the bud up their own nose by accident, the risks of getting infected are slim.
Do you know how the nasal oral swabs are destroyed?
Also the method to clean the lab equipment. Both could cause contamination. I am not sure how long samples used to test for Covid are stored for either.
Incinerator and autoclave respectively. In my memory of biological wastes and laboratory equipment. There would likely be a negative pressure gradient in any lab analyzing SARS-CoV2 too, at least you'd hope so!
Yup. Liquid waste is treated with special disinfectant. Surfaces are treated with disinfectant too and UV light. All disposable waste is treated as biohazardous medical waste. Much of what is used in the lab is disposable anyway and provided in kits, except the PCR machine 😉
“Covid 19 coronavirus: Lockdown expected if UK or South African variant found in community.”
Do we really have to wait until it is in the community to lock down. Economically and socially we would be much better off to lock down NOW. Lock all travellers from countries with high rates of Covid.
There is 1 in 30 infected with it in England.
50% of the elderly are dying from it.
Every 36 hours someone breaks the rules in NZ ‘s quarantine !
New Zealanders have had 9 MONTHS to get home.
Time now to take care of NZ especially the people working on our front lines.
It would be much less economically crushing to stop the travellers till things improve than leave it to a point where the NZ community has to go into Lock Downs again to stop a now very virulent disease.
Wakeup, time to stop being SO KIND, for Gods sake !
or else let people come back as they are rightfully entitled to and instead increase staff level, testing, and anyone caught breaking quarantine rules is having the book thrown at them, their name and face printed all over the news – yeah, shame these entitled assholes – and thus also prevent the coming in of a new threat and the spread there of.
Do we really have to wait until it is in the community to lock down?
MIQ transmission is going to happen with the highly infectious strains and when this happens how is it going to be managed for a person on day 12 not in quarantine just isolation?
The government needs to have the MIQ capacity for this senario. Unprepared will be seen as a failure and National will be all over this.
Think that the risk is not just due to the variant that leaks out, but who it leaks to. Greater Brisbane has just been locked down for 3 days because of a cleaner at a quarantine hotel was infected with the UK variant, but despite 50,000 tests, no-one else has been detected with it. Maybe that’s because the cleaner lived alone and wasn’t an outgoing, social person or someone with a large family who she spread it to. Compare the fast transmission that happened with the Auckland cluster and the Melbourne one. One of the new variants is probably going to leak more often from now on though as there is an increasing amount of it and not just in the UK or South Africa.
Stopping people coming in stops the planes coming and likewise restricts a lot of essential imports ( medicines and like,
) coming in and perishable exports going out via airfreight, This is further complicated with our sea ports been already congested. Simply moving to air freight charters is cost prohibitive and not feasible in a highly global and connected world The government needs to view all these factors and risks, not simply taking a myopic health view only
[You’re spouting so much crap here again because you’re full of shit and nothing else.
Our Government is doing what you accuse it of not doing and more and the irony is that you’re the one with the myopic view.
Outgoing flights are pretty much empty passenger wise and incoming aren't much better because of the MIQ limits. Repatriation charters and fishing / merchant crew changes a slight exception.
As for profit for the airline, I'd say they are loosing money or just cost recovery on the passengers they carry because of the increased per passenger crew costs with the light loadings.
Red: I assume you are not a health care worker. Have you thought about what would happen if our ICUs become full of the COVID sick? I'm making another assumption about you and I apologise if I'm incorrect but from your posts you sound quite young so I assume when you catch COVID you won't be in a high risk group for complications so won't need to go to hospital.
But, if you are unlucky enough to, say, be critically injured in a car accident or suffer a stroke then you'll be denied access to hospital as it will be full already.
"Myopic" this may be, but once our hospitals are full, plenty of those with non-COVID conditions will also die.
What do your stats mean? How do they compare to the other older variants, for example? Are you scaremongering?
Are you suggesting that all New Zealanders who’d want it should have come home by now and that the ones who didn’t have only themselves to blame? It reminds of the bene-bashing ‘reasoning’ by National and ACT. Nice!
Do you believe there are no social costs to locking down “NOW”?
What has “being SO KIND” got to do with it? It sounds like a cheap shot to me.
Have to confess that crossed my mind too. When it was still relatively easy to come back to NZ they didn't do so. Now that the pandemic outbreak has reached emergency levels in the UK they want to come home and expect the welcoming mat to be laid out for them.
Well, they can come back… when it is safe again and NZ is ready to resume normal services. There will always be exceptions granted for special cases.
When it was still relatively easy to come back to NZ they didn't do so.
I don’t follow Janet or you on this ‘nine month’ issue. MIQ was introduced on 9 April 2020, i.e. nine months ago. It was indeed “relatively easy” to return to NZ before then and many New Zealanders did during that short window. In fact, this was one of the reasons why MIQ was not introduced before 9 April.
I recall the warnings being issued back in February and March that this pandemic was going to be around for a long time and that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. A vaccine was thought to be at least two years away.
It shouldn't have taken much to conclude that it would be best to get back to NZ as soon as possible… if simply because of our geographical isolation. I was surprised more people didn't take advantage of the "window" while it was available.
I give my parents as an example. My father was in Germany in the mid 1930s and saw with his own eyes the proliferation of munitions factories and the mood of the nation in general. He returned to England and immediately made plans to take his young family out of Britain to somewhere safe. They went to Australia initially then moved on to NZ two years later. They arrived just before WW2 broke out.
At the time of their departure, they were laughed at by family and friends back in England but he was the one who had the last laugh.
Ok, I think I understand you now, thank you. However, that window of opportunity was a little more than one month or so, not nine months, which means that you and I were thinking of different periods.
Well, I was actually thinking for a longer period – including the start of the mandatory 14 day hotel isolation upon arrival. Over the winter months especially I wouldn't have thought that was too traumatic for most people to handle.
reasons other than self interest for not returning earlier:
lack of money
job contract
fixed term tenancy
needed to sell house
kids in school
poor job prospects in NZ
torn between family there and being here
That last one applies to two of my siblings. I know another family who the job contract applied to.
It doesn't take much imagination to see that NZers overseas have a range of restrictions on their lives that might prevent them just packing up and coming home.
This is horrible that a baby has died and someone is obstructing justice / police. Why do they protect these people? Good that the police have arrested the person for providing false information.
"arborists have inspected the site and made recommendations to undertake work to ensure the vegetation is healthy and safe.
Most of the work involved trimming shrubs back from footpaths, lights or clothes lines".
Lovely to walk footpaths overhung and bordered by trees, lights are unnecessary – if you're afraid of the dark carry a torch – it's called "taking responsibility as an individual for personal safety", clothes lines – it's not direct sunlight but the moisture content of the breeze that determines drying time and a bit of bird shit on the sheets is easily scraped off. Arborists are in business to make money so are looking for reasons to trim and remove, and the tidiness ideology that rules suburbia is enabling them. Tidiness is a huge earner in other ways too of course, supported by "health and safety." regulations.
An untidy, unhealthy and unsafe environment nurtured our human evolution and I owe myself to it – unthinking and ungrateful as others seem to be.
That's why we don't have lightbulbs in the house and the kids have to buy batteries for their torches from their allowances, so they learn to take personal responsibility.
Stuff has been massaging the truth about slave fishermen. There is no struggle – the company applies few a few hundred visas without making any remotely credible attempt to train or retain locals, and Immigration just let it happen, never checking up, just as they have for the last forty years.
A better description would be "the industry is too lazy and inept to train and retain kiwi workers, and the corrupt government supports and colludes in their law-breaking."
Nothing to see here – certainly no NZ jobs lost to exploitive practices.
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TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...
Policymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...
TL;DR: The global economy will be one fifth smaller than it would have otherwise been in 2050 as a result of climate damage, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the journal Nature. (See more detail and analysis below, and ...
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
Life throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...
Gone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...
Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor in Honiara Solomon Islands’ incumbent prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has been re-elected in the East Choiseul constituency. It is the opening move in the political chess match to form the country’s next government. Returning officer Christopher Makoni made the declaration late last night after ...
Headline: The moment of friction. – 36th Parallel Assessments In strategic studies “friction” is a term that it is used to describe the moment when military action encounters adversary resistance. “Friction” is one of four (along with an unofficial fifth) “F’s” in military strategy, which includes force (kinetic mass), ...
The Fast-track Bill, if passed, would allow three Ministers, unchallenged and unchecked, to approve the immediate extraction and exhaustion of one-off resources. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne iamharin/Shutterstock For many people, the term “bulk billed” refers to a GP visit they don’t have to pay ...
Emmas Hislop, Sidnam and Wehipeihana discuss what’s in a name. Emma Sidnam: Hello Emmas! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. My first question for you is related to what’s been on my mind for a while. It’s very important. You see we’ve recently had some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Sievers, Research Fellow, Global Wetlands Project, Australia Rivers Institute, Griffith University Chris Brown Humans love the coast. But we love it to death, so much so we’ve destroyed valuable coastal habitat – in the case of some types of habitat, ...
Josh Thomson on the 80s milk ad jingle he can’t stop singing, the beauty of The Simpsons, why Jersey Shore is as good as Shakespeare and more. For someone who spends a lot of time on our screens, popping up in everything from 7 Days to Taskmaster, Educators to Good ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
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BAU @ the MOH.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/434321/covid-19-miq-nurses-concerned-about-staffing-instability-at-border-facilities
Nurses working at managed isolation facilities across the country have raised concerns about staff shortages and instability.
.. The ministry said the matters have been addressed – but many health care professionals working at border facilities disagree.
In a peculiarly bizarre way this is somewhat comforting.
When entropy reigns supreme, and it seems there is nothing and no one who can be trusted there's our systemically dysfunctional Ministry of Health reliably doing what we all know they do best.
Denying, minimising, dismissing and generally disrespecting those at the front line and at the coal face.
In a statement to RNZ, the ministry confirmed all matters identified in the audit had been followed up and addressed.
But that is rejected by two of the country's largest nursing unions, which have hundreds of members working in MIQ facilities.
oh well if only we had a caring and gentle government that has a clear majority to get stuff done.
The problem is not the 'Ministry' the problem is the government. And it seems that the Labour Government is even less inclined to work for their wages then the National Goverment.
I spoke with a nurse a few month back who laughingly stated that the new ventilators had arrived in the country – thanks god – now if we could just train and hire and pay the nurses to man and monitor these ventilators.
Surely any day now – any day now, our Labor overlords are gonna do something about something. I can see someone write an article about how all this time was squandered by people who yet don't suffer the consequences of their actions.
It will only take one slip up for the highly infectious strains to enter the community.
I would go to a 21 day isolation until vaccination is at a high enough level.
I would trust the judgement of the medical staff working in isolation over the MoH.
My main concern is having the testing capability to detect a new strain and to know the period of being infectious.
Now is not the time to ration resources in MIQ. There is only one line of defence and once it is broken the clean up will be immense on many levels.
Except, this isn’t BAU and MoH is not the only Ministry involved in MIQ.
From your link:
It is important to keep the pressure on and the nurses unions, epidemiologists, and other experts are doing a good job at that and in sticking up for their members at the same time. However, the RNZ article was more balanced and the situation appears to be less B & W than your comment suggested 🙂
I think it is important to keep in mind that nobody has the perfect answer/solution/approach and that the situation with Covid is always evolving and changing.
With respect, Incognito, I assume that folks who visit here are more than capable of reading a linked article in its entirety and form their own opinions.
Twenty years of having to deal with the Ministry of Health and its agents over disability issues has left me cynical and disillusioned. Health is about people…and unfortunately our Ministry of Health, as a bureaucracy, seems to forget this basic premise.
The Ministry has form. For years they denied, dismissed and minimised the abuse and neglect of disabled people in MOH funded residential care. Look up the 2013 articles by Kirsty Johnston.
At the same time the Ministry declared open warfare against those people with significant disabilities and the family members who they had chosen to provide the high level of care they need. Or they had no option (other than the potential horrors of residential care) than to have resident family provide the care…because the Ministry of Health refused to fund the advanced personal cares required.
Despite the issue of paying family carers having been heard many times in various legal settings over the past two decades (with our side winning with embarrassing monotony) it was only in April last year, and under 'special' Covid conditions, that my partner has been allowed to pay me as his carer. And we have been reminded by the Ministry this is temporary. Goddess forbid we should ever feel secure.
A quick search on the Natrad webpage and you'll find numerous articles (Many by Catherine Hutton) describing the deep despair of disabled people and their families. Nothing changes for the better because of the culture of the Ministry.
I spent a while over New Years speaking with a midwife. Again, the good folk at Natrad have also kept track over the years as the midwives have battled to gain some level of respect from the funders… the Miserly of Health.
And this midwife was using the same language and expressed the same deep despair that we in the MOH disability community have voiced.
And I'm hearing that same tone from these nurses.
But this time, with Te Virus scratching at our borders, the risks if the Ministry runs true to form will impact the whole community.
Not just the disabled. Not just women and babies.
I make no apologies.
You’d be surprised how many people don’t read any further than a headline 😉
When people read your comment, they may or may not decide to read the linked article, based on your PoV. BTW, this is exactly why tend to insist on links and a brief accompanying commentary as to what to expect and as to why people should read it.
Your views of MoH are well documented here and you have your reasons.
I make no apologies for presenting my take on the same article to which you linked. This does not take away anything at all from your personal experiences of and with MoH. It is about presenting another perspective on the content of the article and a number of voices therein, including those of some nurses, not on MoH as such.
HTH
it is worrying though about the new mutation. Only a matter of time before another outbreak. Trust our health people it manage it, but will likely mean another location
Prior to the more infectious strains the MoH was able to manage Covid – 19. Looking at overseas tends with the newer highly infectious strains I do not have the same level of confidence when it comes to containing a community outbreak.
trends
Hypothetical exchange between Senior Management at a MIQ facility and a Senior Level Bureaucrat at the MOH.
MIQ…."We really need more staff at all levels…."
MOH…."But you're all doing so well! There's absolutely NO community transmission! It's obvious we've got this! Keep it up team!"
MIQ…"But we're all so tired. We've all been at this for months. We need to train up many more people so we can have a break. Some at the frontline are so scared of making a mistake because of exhaustion that stress levels are through the roof. Please approve more funding for more staff."
MOH…. "Look guys…we get this is all very new…but its clear we have hit just the right note here. We don't need to go overboard. All those little niggles that you guys had last October have been dealt to. Look at the paperwork …we have an Action Plan!"
MIQ…"Please. Please…."
I really really hope that when an MIQ worker makes a claim for PTSD or other mental injury that ACC do not piss them about.
MIQ would be like a war zone for some health workers constantly having to be vigilant would be exhausting.
I have not given it much thought as to how safe lab workers are when it comes to processing Covid – 19 samples or contagion in a lab.
They're at fairly low risk.
Their job is working with samples that are presumed to be dangerously pathogenic at all times, not just when there's a pandemic going on. So they've got the mindset, skills and equipment to keep themselves safe.
That is reassuring for lab workers. Skills and equipment make the difference.
A lot of it would be mindset, like security.
(Being purposefully vague to protect the guilty) there was fairly recently a non-medical biohazard facility that was close to losing certification because it had a lot of students screwing up the lab's integrity. Things like opening windows when the air is supposed to be filtered before going back outside, or not wearing lab coats so they're taking stuff outside on their street clothes.
Mind you, seventy years ago people were using potassium cyanide in their spare room or manipulating plutonium cores with screwdrivers instead of the mandated shims, so the mindset has come a long way.
And storing radium in a draw in the laboratory. My cousin who worked at the DSIR Physical Engineering Laboratory in Gracefield tells of the time they were doing a clean-up in the late 50's when they opened a draw they seldom used and found at the back a large sample of radium (I've forgotten how many curies were written on it). He initially worked for Sir Ernest Marsden as a lab tech.
Bit off topic – a question in a recent quiz in ‘The Listener’ reminded me of the once common enough practice of using X-ray Shoe Fitter, Pedoscope and Foot-o-scope devices in shoe shops.
Ancestor of the current shoe store quackery machines.
In kinda related vein, the DDT pump in the pantry, for cockroaches and other pests.
A very bad idea, but oddly enough one that didn't trigger an epidemic of foot cancer either. If there was any radiation harm caused by them, it's buried in the statistical noise.
Besides that wiki article bases it's case on the now very shakey Linear No Threshold (LNT) thesis originally put up by Muller in 1927. While it may have been a useful idea in the early days of nuclear radiation, being the most conservative model possible and could have been justified as a 'precautionary principle', all the real world data since has strongly suggested that in fact all living creatures are constantly bathed in a background radiation that does us no harm at all.
Indeed there are a number of cases where people have lived with substantially higher background radiation levels over long periods, and surprisingly show reduced levels of cancer.
No-one has been able to prove a watertight case either way (nor given the nature of the RCT necessary are they ever likely to), but there are good grounds to think that the LNT thesis is far too conservative and generates perverse outcomes.
Agree 100%, "A very bad idea", exploitative even – kinda why I mentioned it.
An interesting ‘constellation’ or another ‘Covid-bandwagon’?
Low-Dose Radiation to COVID-19 Patients to Ease the Disease Course and Reduce the Need of Intensive Care
https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/61/12/1724
That is interesting; how on earth did you stumble on that?
You do ask a really worthwhile question; how to tell the difference between a useful result and 'covid bandwagon'. After all a decent RCT trial to put the matter beyond all doubt is simply not going to be available in most cases. Demanding this level of gold standard proof is not always reasonable.
A good comparison can be made with the case made against tobacco smoking and lung cancer, that never rested on anything more than historic observation studies and correlations as far as I’m aware. I doubt anyone ever did a full noise RCT on this (although I could always be wrong).
As time goes on we continue to learn more about COVID, and we find all manner of interesting aspects like the probable role that Vitamin D, Zinc, and Selenium may play. The jury remains noisily deadlocked on Ivermectin, and I'm sure there a few other plays out there I'm unaware of.
One point I need to clarify; it's perfectly possible to be both alarmed at the threat of this disease and at the same time alarmed and disappointed at some of the responses by various medical authorities and governments.
More than anything else we need to stop politicising this; it was a catastrophe for the climate change issue, and will play out no better on this.
About 40 years ago I got given an asbestos circular mat to put hot pots on. I kept it for about a year.
Not sure if all asbestos is harmful.
For all practical purposes, yes, all asbestos is harmful. Your mat was probably made with chrysotile (white asbestos), which is the most common and least hazardous form of asbestos. But that "least hazardous" is kinda like saying ebola is less hazardous than rabies.
The really dangerous route for it to cause harm is when it get turns into dust and you breathe it in. So your mat for hot pots is lowish risk, unless you were in the habit of banging it against a post at about head level to get dust out of it, like a rug.
If it's not getting turned into dust, then it's low risk. That's why the advice is if your house has asbestos in the walls or ceiling or roof, don't worry about it unless you disturb it somehow. Like doing renovations, or cleaning an asbestos cement roof. Then you need the $$$$$ expert$$$$$ to come and deal with it.
Nasal/oral swabs don’t exhale, sneeze or cough on the lab workers. The actual sample is stuck in and onto the bud, which is how it has been designed to work. Unless the lab worker licks their gloved fingers, sucks the bud, or sticks the bud up their own nose by accident, the risks of getting infected are slim.
Do you know how the nasal oral swabs are destroyed?
Also the method to clean the lab equipment. Both could cause contamination. I am not sure how long samples used to test for Covid are stored for either.
Treetop
Incinerator and autoclave respectively. In my memory of biological wastes and laboratory equipment. There would likely be a negative pressure gradient in any lab analyzing SARS-CoV2 too, at least you'd hope so!
Thanks for that. Lab workers are doing a stellar job and would be putting in long hours.
Yup. Liquid waste is treated with special disinfectant. Surfaces are treated with disinfectant too and UV light. All disposable waste is treated as biohazardous medical waste. Much of what is used in the lab is disposable anyway and provided in kits, except the PCR machine 😉
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-lockdown-expected-if-uk-or-south-african-variant-found-in-community-expert/ZDZKWHQTJOPBPFGDRKUZW4SRNA/
“Covid 19 coronavirus: Lockdown expected if UK or South African variant found in community.”
Do we really have to wait until it is in the community to lock down. Economically and socially we would be much better off to lock down NOW. Lock all travellers from countries with high rates of Covid.
There is 1 in 30 infected with it in England.
50% of the elderly are dying from it.
Every 36 hours someone breaks the rules in NZ ‘s quarantine !
New Zealanders have had 9 MONTHS to get home.
Time now to take care of NZ especially the people working on our front lines.
It would be much less economically crushing to stop the travellers till things improve than leave it to a point where the NZ community has to go into Lock Downs again to stop a now very virulent disease.
Wakeup, time to stop being SO KIND, for Gods sake !
or else let people come back as they are rightfully entitled to and instead increase staff level, testing, and anyone caught breaking quarantine rules is having the book thrown at them, their name and face printed all over the news – yeah, shame these entitled assholes – and thus also prevent the coming in of a new threat and the spread there of.
Do we really have to wait until it is in the community to lock down?
MIQ transmission is going to happen with the highly infectious strains and when this happens how is it going to be managed for a person on day 12 not in quarantine just isolation?
The government needs to have the MIQ capacity for this senario. Unprepared will be seen as a failure and National will be all over this.
Think that the risk is not just due to the variant that leaks out, but who it leaks to. Greater Brisbane has just been locked down for 3 days because of a cleaner at a quarantine hotel was infected with the UK variant, but despite 50,000 tests, no-one else has been detected with it. Maybe that’s because the cleaner lived alone and wasn’t an outgoing, social person or someone with a large family who she spread it to. Compare the fast transmission that happened with the Auckland cluster and the Melbourne one. One of the new variants is probably going to leak more often from now on though as there is an increasing amount of it and not just in the UK or South Africa.
Yes who it leaks to. As well the cleaner was at the tail end of infection so viral load is an issue.
Stopping people coming in stops the planes coming and likewise restricts a lot of essential imports ( medicines and like,
) coming in and perishable exports going out via airfreight, This is further complicated with our sea ports been already congested. Simply moving to air freight charters is cost prohibitive and not feasible in a highly global and connected world The government needs to view all these factors and risks, not simply taking a myopic health view only
[You’re spouting so much crap here again because you’re full of shit and nothing else.
Our Government is doing what you accuse it of not doing and more and the irony is that you’re the one with the myopic view.
Keep it up and you’ll be flying – Incognito]
Outgoing flights are pretty much empty passenger wise and incoming aren't much better because of the MIQ limits. Repatriation charters and fishing / merchant crew changes a slight exception.
As for profit for the airline, I'd say they are loosing money or just cost recovery on the passengers they carry because of the increased per passenger crew costs with the light loadings.
See my Moderation note @ 4:08 PM.
Sorry I'm usually a lurker here but have to bite.
Red: I assume you are not a health care worker. Have you thought about what would happen if our ICUs become full of the COVID sick? I'm making another assumption about you and I apologise if I'm incorrect but from your posts you sound quite young so I assume when you catch COVID you won't be in a high risk group for complications so won't need to go to hospital.
But, if you are unlucky enough to, say, be critically injured in a car accident or suffer a stroke then you'll be denied access to hospital as it will be full already.
"Myopic" this may be, but once our hospitals are full, plenty of those with non-COVID conditions will also die.
Nice comment Stan, & quite correct.
Given that the new strain is expected to become dominant globally very quickly, how long do you propose we should lock down “NOW”?
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/new-highly-infectious-covid-19-variant-become-dominant-all-over-world-michael-baker
What do your stats mean? How do they compare to the other older variants, for example? Are you scaremongering?
Are you suggesting that all New Zealanders who’d want it should have come home by now and that the ones who didn’t have only themselves to blame? It reminds of the bene-bashing ‘reasoning’ by National and ACT. Nice!
Do you believe there are no social costs to locking down “NOW”?
What has “being SO KIND” got to do with it? It sounds like a cheap shot to me.
Absolutely.
"New Zealanders have had 9 MONTHS to get home."
Have to confess that crossed my mind too. When it was still relatively easy to come back to NZ they didn't do so. Now that the pandemic outbreak has reached emergency levels in the UK they want to come home and expect the welcoming mat to be laid out for them.
Well, they can come back… when it is safe again and NZ is ready to resume normal services. There will always be exceptions granted for special cases.
I don’t follow Janet or you on this ‘nine month’ issue. MIQ was introduced on 9 April 2020, i.e. nine months ago. It was indeed “relatively easy” to return to NZ before then and many New Zealanders did during that short window. In fact, this was one of the reasons why MIQ was not introduced before 9 April.
This where I am coming from Incognito:
I recall the warnings being issued back in February and March that this pandemic was going to be around for a long time and that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. A vaccine was thought to be at least two years away.
It shouldn't have taken much to conclude that it would be best to get back to NZ as soon as possible… if simply because of our geographical isolation. I was surprised more people didn't take advantage of the "window" while it was available.
I give my parents as an example. My father was in Germany in the mid 1930s and saw with his own eyes the proliferation of munitions factories and the mood of the nation in general. He returned to England and immediately made plans to take his young family out of Britain to somewhere safe. They went to Australia initially then moved on to NZ two years later. They arrived just before WW2 broke out.
At the time of their departure, they were laughed at by family and friends back in England but he was the one who had the last laugh.
I see a similarity between the two situations.
Ok, I think I understand you now, thank you. However, that window of opportunity was a little more than one month or so, not nine months, which means that you and I were thinking of different periods.
Well, I was actually thinking for a longer period – including the start of the mandatory 14 day hotel isolation upon arrival. Over the winter months especially I wouldn't have thought that was too traumatic for most people to handle.
reasons other than self interest for not returning earlier:
That last one applies to two of my siblings. I know another family who the job contract applied to.
It doesn't take much imagination to see that NZers overseas have a range of restrictions on their lives that might prevent them just packing up and coming home.
The precautions are so that we DON'T have to lock down.
Exactly …… you got it ! and only while the Pandemic is RAGING as it is in Britain and USA right now !
This is horrible that a baby has died and someone is obstructing justice / police. Why do they protect these people? Good that the police have arrested the person for providing false information.
Auckland baby homicide: Woman charged with attempting to obstruct justice | Stuff.co.nz
"arborists have inspected the site and made recommendations to undertake work to ensure the vegetation is healthy and safe.
Most of the work involved trimming shrubs back from footpaths, lights or clothes lines".
Lovely to walk footpaths overhung and bordered by trees, lights are unnecessary – if you're afraid of the dark carry a torch – it's called "taking responsibility as an individual for personal safety", clothes lines – it's not direct sunlight but the moisture content of the breeze that determines drying time and a bit of bird shit on the sheets is easily scraped off. Arborists are in business to make money so are looking for reasons to trim and remove, and the tidiness ideology that rules suburbia is enabling them. Tidiness is a huge earner in other ways too of course, supported by "health and safety." regulations.
An untidy, unhealthy and unsafe environment nurtured our human evolution and I owe myself to it – unthinking and ungrateful as others seem to be.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/123913689/terminallyill-social-housing-resident-fears-council-will-destroy-her-ecorefuge
That's why we don't have lightbulbs in the house and the kids have to buy batteries for their torches from their allowances, so they learn to take personal responsibility.
the deep-sea fishing industry has struggled to recruit Kiwi workers
Stuff has been massaging the truth about slave fishermen. There is no struggle – the company applies few a few hundred visas without making any remotely credible attempt to train or retain locals, and Immigration just let it happen, never checking up, just as they have for the last forty years.
A better description would be "the industry is too lazy and inept to train and retain kiwi workers, and the corrupt government supports and colludes in their law-breaking."
Nothing to see here – certainly no NZ jobs lost to exploitive practices.
I know you snakes are up to something let roll in the Court system and see what happens Muppets.
Ka kite Ano.