Deaths from respiratory diseases ‘not inevitable’

Friday, 6 October 2023

Professor Michael Baker acknowledges Covid-19 is now “like an unwanted guest that no one wants to talk about any more”.

New Zealanders do not have to die every day from influenza, RSV and Covid-19, says a group of health leaders calling for the lessons from the pandemic to be applied to other severe airborne diseases.

Sixteen of New Zealand’s leading scientists and doctors — many regular commentators during the pandemic response — are behind the call, published on Friday in the NZ Medical Journal.

Lead author and epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said Covid-19 was now “like an unwanted guest that no one wants to talk about any more”.

But it was still our leading infectious disease killer, followed by influenza, he said.

Wellington shoppers in March 2020 after the government declared a level 4 lockdown.

The fact the Prime Minister and former Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins was infected with the virus was a “very sad and poignant” reminder that it hadn’t gone away, Baker said.

Co-author Dr Nikki Turner, director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, said while we could not eradicate these diseases, we could minimise severe disease and death through a clear strategy.

Key ongoing measures would include improving indoor air quality, increasing sick leave support and wearing masks in healthcare settings and looking at mandating masks on public transport, especially in winter.

Ongoing masking in healthcare settings and exploring mandating masks on public transport, especially in winter should be part of key ongoing preventatigve measures, the authors say. (File photo)

Baker said while another pandemic was “a matter of time”, it did not have to mean a massive death toll.

“Just like the road toll, it's not inevitable. People don't have to die every day from these respiratory infections. What we’re really arguing is building on the momentum of the pandemic response and what we’ve learned from that.”

Predicting pandemics was a bit like predicting earthquakes, Baker said.

“You can identify hotspots — places that are more vulnerable – but you can't say when it will be, exactly where it will be and how bad it will be.”

Sir Collin Tukuitonga, president of the College of Public Health Medicine, stressed the importance of stepping up Māori and Pasifika leadership in future decision-making.

This was why keeping up with vaccinations for influenza and Covid-19 were so important to minimise severe disease, he said. He expected an RSV vaccine recently approved for certain people in the US would eventually be rolled out in NZ.

Co-author Sir Collin Tukuitonga, president of the College of Public Health Medicine, stressed the importance of stepping up Māori and Pasifika leadership in future decision-making, saying that was where Aotearoa’s pandemic response fell over.

“If we were to have another pandemic, and chances are we will, we should really make the effort to better support, to better inform, to have a more effective immunisation strategy to better support them with primary care at home, social services support, information, that kind of thing.”

It would make sense to do this through Te Aka Whai Ora — the Māori Health Authority and labelled National’s promise to scrap it “unfortunate and ill-informed”.

“You’ve got to give it a chance. We haven’t done anything like this before, and certainly doing the same old, same old isn’t going to deliver any real change,” he said.

Epidemiologist Professor Amanda Kvalsvig said the pandemic response showed airborne infections were much more preventable than previously thought.

“Now that we know this, we must never go back.”