Just the facts - A closer look at the Covid-19 vaccine being rolled out across Aotearoa. How it works, why we need it and who developed it. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Barry Soper
Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB's senior political correspondent
New Zealand is just one community Covid case away from catastrophe.
New South Wales is an example of that with some suggestions the state could be closed down until Christmas closes in.
But if you think that's bad, spare a thought for Fiji, a country of fewer than amillion people and one which managed to keep the ghastly virus out of the community for 200 days last year, the year of Covid when the rest of us were locking down.
Citizens in that country are afraid of speaking out about anything, with seven opposition politicians, including the original coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka, being arrested for doing just that last weekend.
Still, some are courageous enough to talk behind cupped hands and what they're saying is horrendous.
These are the stories from that Covid ridden country where more than 18,000 active cases, probably many more, are in isolation.
The numbers coming out of Fiji clearly disguise what's really happening there. Fewer than 10 deaths a day, officially acknowledged, are being scoffed at by those in the know on the inside. They put it at between 30 and 40.
The trouble with the figures is they are not being digitalised, they are trying to note them down manually and the backlog doesn't bear thinking about.
The authorities there have stopped serious Covid testing, and quarantine facilities are full to overflowing. People with Covid are being sent home to isolate in shacks where up to eight people live and serious cases aren't being monitored.
A makeshift hospital in Fiji. Photo / Facebook@Fijian Government
The mortuaries are full to capacity and the morticians have run out of body bags, with plastic replacements now being used. Once the bag is sealed it can't be opened for fear of further contamination.
There have been cases of families receiving and burying the wrong corpse.
All this has come from those who are working at the pit face in Fiji with the most disturbing quote from a senior medic: "No one is coming out alive from an ICU - if you go in you come out in a body bag."
A makeshift hospital has been set up at Suva's National Stadium and that's not coping.
A request for a Covid patient to be airlifted to Auckland's Middlemore Hospital on Tuesday, thought to be that of a World Health Organisation official, was turned down with hospitals in the city arguing they didn't have the capacity.
More likely, didn't want to have the capacity to deal with the risk the patient would pose to this poorly vaccinated country.
