The brutal reality of the Covid-19 front lines has been revealed by a leading South Auckland GP.
Dr Matire Harwood works at the Papakura Marae Health Clinic. She told Q+A with Jack Tame that while her team had hope through last year's Delta outbreak, health workers have now lost that hope.
The relentless pressure on resources is taking it toll on staff – many are getting sick, and some are leaving the profession altogether, said Harwood.
“My understanding is that there are over 800 ads for GPs across Aotearoa at the moment, so we’re all struggling to find someone.”
In response, Papakura Marae are running a drive-through GP clinic. On the day Q+A visited, just two staff were juggling 90 appointments.
Each clinic's shortages are rippling across the heath system, seeing more people end up in hospital.
“And so we’ve seen people who are not able to get in to us, getting Covid for a second time, and unfortunately the second time has hit them a bit harder than the first time and they’ve ended up in hospital acutely because they haven’t been able to get in to see us," said Harwood.
"We might be able to manage it at home but its got too far along and they’ve ended up in hospital with pneumonia.”
Harwood disagrees with the Health Minister Andrew Little, who says the health system overall is coping.
“We can’t screen for cancers, we can’t manage their diabetes as well, we’re doing a lot of prescriptions over the phone without seeing people, and again they’re saying they waited too long to see us and presented acutely to emergency departments.
“We’re just treading water.”
Harwood said her team is already seeing reinfections, both in the community, and in the health workforce.
“Internationally we’ve been told that the second infection tends not to be as bad as the first time but that hasn’t been the case for us here – and it might reflect the environment that our community is living in, reflect the level of co-morbidities or other health conditions, but we’ve seen people have to go into hospital with pneumonia with the second infection.
“We’ve also had a huge number of people with long Covid. So again internationally, evidence says maybe 10%, we’re seeing probably 30% of our patients having Long Covid, not being able to go back to work, having to stay away from school for much longer,” said Harwood.
“I’m not sure that we’re set up for long Covid in our health system either, I think we’ve been so much focused on that acute care, and trying to get people better and staying out of the hospital system...but it would be great to get some more support around that.”
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