Friday 5: 15 July 2022

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday 5! Where we will celebrate all the wonderful on-going work at the NRHCC.

1. There was awesome coverage that was featured on Te Karere, 1 news online, and the advocate this week for our first kaumatua event in Tai Tokerau for our Flu winter wellness Kaupapa was Kristen Holtz

Northland mother shares tips for cooking healthy kai on a budget (1news.co.nz)

2. On Thursday 30th June, we said haere ra to our Westgate Vaccination Centre, the site was West Auckland’s first Pacific focused Covid-19 vaccination centre and administered a total of 93,388 Covid-19 vaccinations and distributed 277,725 RATs . The site was run by Pacific Provider, The Fono and the kaimahi consistently provided a warm pacific welcome to not only their pacific communities but many other families within the Waitemata district.

3. This week Primary care ran a webinar called ‘Assisting Primary Care through the winter demand’ to offer practices information about the support being put in place to assist primary care during this winter’s cold and flu season. The NRHCC panel talked about the cascading level of care, including self-help online and self-care, virtual care via Healthline, face-to-face or virtual care via pharmacies, general practice, or urgent care/after-hours. Over 600 people registered to join the webinar!

4. Effective from Monday 18 July 2022 Pharmacies can distribute three antiviral treatments for treating early COVID-19 at no cost, to more than 400,000 more New Zealanders if they get the virus. The access criteria for the antiviral treatments for COVID-19 has been widened to include a larger priority population of people at risk of severe illness from COVID-19 infection.

• all people aged 75 years and over

• people who have been admitted previously to an Intensive Care Unit directly as a result of COVID-19

• the number of factors Māori and Pacific Peoples are required to have to access these antiviral treatments will reduce

5. The Government announced that masks and RATs will now be offered at Community collection sites for vulnerable populations free of charge. The Testing team has been working with hard with our sites as they implement this new initiative and work to meet demand.

And finally, haere ra all our leavers this week! Matt Hannant (Director of Operations), Emma McDowell (Business Manager) and Fernanda Franco (Clinical Governance). Thank you for all your mahi during your time at the NRHCC, we wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Ngā mihi,

The PMO Team