The New Zealand health system does not have enough capacity to handle a widespread outbreak, which health experts say underscores the government's decision to a level 4 lockdown.
Experts say that a Covid outbreak in New Zealand on the scale of Sydney's would push New Zealand's hospitals to the limit. Even 70 to 100 people requiring ICU care would be at the limit of our health system to cope. Currently, Sydney has approximately 500 hundred people hospitalised and nearly 100 in the ICU.
Last year New Zealand ranked near the bottom of the OECD for per-capita ICU capacity. Since then, the Ministry of Health says the number of available ICU-capable ventilators has more than doubled.
In May last year, as the country was coming out of its first lockdown, a Ministry of Health paper found 334 ventilators and 358 ICU beds, triggering the low ranking in the OECD per-capita ICU capacity.
As of August 2021, the health ministry confirmed 629 ICU-capable ventilators, with an additional133 available in the national reserve. Interestingly, out of the above 629, there are only 284 fully staffed ICU beds across public hospitals.
ICU doctor Craig Carr, the New Zealand regional chair of the Australia NZ Intensive Care Society, told The New Zealand Herald earlier this week that ICU ventilator machines mean nothing unless they are operated by trained ICU staff, which unfortunately has not increased in the last 18 months.
"We now have more equipment compared with 18 months ago, but we actually have very few extra staff, and in some instances, we've got fewer staff," he said, adding he was speaking in a personal capacity.
"Actual resourced bed capacity on a day-to-day basis, in terms of a bed with a nurse and a ventilator and all the monitors - that has not risen, to my knowledge, in the last 18 months" said Carr.
Speaking to TVNZ Q&A on Sunday, Minister Chris Hipkins conceded that more Intensive Care Unit-capable beds didn't mean more ICU capacity if there wasn't enough highly specialised staff.
"You can't just magic up extra healthcare workers. We are bringing in healthcare workers across the border, but every country that's dealt with this has had to adjust their ICU settings, including lower ratios of staff where there are significant numbers of Covid patients."
Some nurses have been upskilled to take some pressure off ICU staffing levels, he said, but they were not ICU specialists.
"Hospitals have contingency plans to convert general wards into facilities to cope with Covid-19 if we get to that point."
A large outbreak would put the health system under pressure, Hipkins said. "No amount of planning will be able to completely alleviate that."
The Ministry of Health does not hold data on ICU nursing staff, but noted a Nursing Council survey of nurses who said they worked in "intensive care/cardiac care" as either primary or secondary work.
The number of nurses has not risen much from 2524 last year to 2550 this year. The government faced criticism in the ongoing split migrant family saga, as there are many migrant community nurses and doctors who have either left or are planning to leave New Zealand due to the alleged unfair treatment by immigration and border closures.
DHBs last year were asked to have surge capacity for 550 ICU-capable beds, but Carr said that wasn't the same as business-as-usual ICU beds.
"You get to the point of what Italy had with lots of patients on ventilators, but they weren't being looked after by an ICU nurse or doctor.”
"Clearly the patient's still got a chance at life, but it's not as good as if they had an ICU and doctor to engage in their day-to-day care."
That meant in the given circumstances that our healthcare system cannot handle a widespread outbreak of the delta variant, a level 4 lockdown was the correct response for Delta cases in the community, Carr said.
Many critics have questioned the speed of the vaccine rollout.
One noticeable thing is that the government has finally woken up and extended its outreach into the community resulting in ramping up the vaccine rollout since the recent Delta variant outbreak.
Many feel that the government should have done this by July, not after this delta variant entered the community, triggering another nationwide lockdown.
Speaking to the Indian Weekender, a GP commented, "Covid vaccination rates were far too low to protect New Zealand from the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus. That's why we're back in lockdown".
He even expressed concern about the current vaccination rate and hoped the government would find more innovative ways to make the vaccine available to everyone faster.
"Ideally, by now, the majority of kiwis should have been vaccinated. We have such a good window available, and we went too slow", he further added.
Another kiwi Indian small business owner lamented, "the government should have been more proactive and vaccinated the entire population during the luxury of the six-month window they had. Maybe that would have saved us from another level 4 lockdown."
The impact of these lockdowns on small businesses, especially in the hospitality sector, taxi, the service sector, is fatal.
Indian Weekender sincerely hopes that our vaccination rates improve and urges all its readers to cooperate with the government and help the team of five million overcome future lockdowns.