Danni Heron, Jamal Archibald, and Jesse Locke at Raumanga Medical Centre vaccination clinic took part in Super Saturday. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Danni Heron, Jamal Archibald, and Jesse Locke at Raumanga Medical Centre vaccination clinic took part in Super Saturday. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Nearly 100,000 Northlanders are fully vaccinated after the Super Saturday success, which administered more than 5000 Pfizer jabs in the region.
As of yesterday morning, 93,761 Northlanders – 56.9 per cent of the eligible population – have received a double dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Another 15.8 per cent havehad their first dose.
Whangārei District is ahead with 60.8 per cent fully vaccinated (14.2 per cent one dose), followed by Kaipara with 52.3 per cent (18.1 per cent one dose) and Far North is behind with 51.3 per cent fully immunised (16.5 per cent one dose).
In Whangārei, only a quarter of the population remains unvaccinated.
Waipū residents 'D1' Allan Beverwijk and 'D2' Patsy Beverwijk visit Kensington Health Hub vaccination centre on Super Saturday. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Meanwhile, Northland health services are battling a backlog of surgeries and procedures that had to be deferred because of recent lockdowns.
"The current lockdown has again had an impact on a range of services provided by Northland DHB," said Mark McGinley, Northland DHB's general manager for surgical and support services.
"Unfortunately surgeries and procedures were deferred in-line with the Ministry of Health guidance around alert levels and hospital response."
During the lockdown in August and September, about 205 surgeries and 760 procedures were deferred.
"The procedures include minor surgical procedures (completed outside theatre), endoscopy and radiological investigations," McGinley explained.
The DHB has a system in place to prioritise patients and work through the backlog.
"We continually review prioritisation of patients across our services during times of normal activity.
"We use a range of tools and techniques to conduct these reviews. Therefore the same approach will apply post lockdown," McGinley said.
A Whangārei emergency doctor who spoke to RNZ this week said more people needed to get immunised immediately, to relieve the region's health services.
Dr Gary Payinda warned that wait times, delays in treatments and staffing struggles would increase if a community outbreak hit Northland.
"There will be a shutdown of the health system – there will be not just weeks but months of having crippled hospitals that can't take care of people who are coming in with heart attacks and strokes and broken hips."
Approximately 205 surgeries and 760 procedures were deferred during the recent lockdowns. Photo / Tania Whyte
Payinda was recently on his weekend off when he got an urgent text from a colleague, asking for help to manage a backlog of patients.
"There were over a dozen patients backed up in the waiting room who were significantly sick and needed to be seen in a timely fashion – these are not patients who are low acuity and can go somewhere else, these are patients who genuinely need care."
He admitted all but one of the patients he saw that day to the hospital, and said that pressure on the system showed how vulnerable it already was.
"Just imagine if that's a normal Saturday without Covid, how can we possibly say that we're prepared to respond to a Covid surge?"
Payinda said there was a sense of foreboding for the roughly 600,000 New Zealanders who had yet to be vaccinated.
"Six hundred thousand unvaccinated adults – that is like dry tinder just waiting for a match, and what I and other emergency doctors – and doctors of all kinds – worry about is a huge surplus of demand, as and when Covid sweeps through."
