The Star: October 14, 2021

The Star Thursday October 14 2021
4
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Overcoming the fear
• From page 1
Ruben’s mother Justine, a
teacher at the school, brought
her son and his 14-year-old
sister, India, who both go to
Papanui High School, in to get
their first jabs. While India had
been on board with the need to
be vaccinated, Ruben had taken
some convincing, due to his dislike
of injections.
The two teenagers were among
16 people vaccinated at the
Haeata clinic, which was open
from 11.30am-2pm.
Whanau Ora Community
Clinic clinical lead Mani Beniwal
said she believed the low
turnout was due to yesterday’s
poor weather and school holidays.
Whanau Ora was now planning
one clinic each week at the
school in school hours, noon-
2pm, over the next three weeks.
She said the aim was to attract
Haeata Community Campus
students and their families,
considering it was likely that not
all of the school community had
been vaccinated.
Jadah Coffin, head girl at
Haeata, was supported by fellow
student Isabel Froom, as she
got her second jab at the clinic
yesterday.
Like Ruben, all her friends
were on board with being vaccinated.
Nevertheless, Jadah was aware
the school’s catchment area had
one of the lowest vaccination
HAPPY AS: India and
Ruben Johnson, with
mother Justine, were
among 16 vaccinated
at Haeata Community
Campus yesterday.
Left – Head girl Jadah
Coffin (right), and fellow
student Isabel Froom, are
now fully vaccinated.
rates in the country. She believed
this was more to do with access
issues than resistance. Single
parents and other busy members
of the community could find
it difficult to get to vaccination
clinics, she said.
CDHB well placed
to manage cases
• From page 1
He said about 10 per cent of
cases were requiring hospital care
in the current outbreak. With 160
new cases per day, 16 a day going
to hospital would put “immense
stress” on the country’s
healthcare system.
“I think we are on a knifeedge
in the sense that cases are
clearly growing and the outbreak
is clearly getting bigger,” Plank
said.
Plank said that “hopefully”
getting more people vaccinated
would slow that rate down.
However, a fellow modelling
expert said it was too late for
New Zealand to vaccinate its
way out of the growth phase of
the epidemic, and there was a
strong case for return to level 4
lockdown in Auckland.
Dr Dion O’Neale at the
University of Auckland said
the current outbreak was not a
random spike.
“In such a situation it is very
tough to vaccinate our way out
of the growing case numbers,”
O’Neale said.
It took a couple of weeks for
fully vaccinated people to develop
a full immune response, during
which time several generations
of Covid-19 infections could get
under way.
Currently about 56 per cent of
the eligible population is fully
vaccinated.
“There’s a strong case to be
made for a temporary return
to alert level 4 in Auckland
as a circuit-breaker to limit
transmission for a few weeks
while we try to get as many
people vaccinated as possible,”
O’Neale said.
Canterbury District Health
Board senior responsible officer
for the Covid-19 response
Dr Helen Skinner said the
Canterbury health system was
well placed to manage any cases
of Covid-19 confirmed in the
region.
However, Skinner would not
be drawn on what the CDHB’s
predictions were for how many
Covid-19 patients it could be
dealing with in coming weeks
and months.
In terms of capacity at
Christchurch Hospital, in
addition to 32 dedicated beds
in the newly established
Parkside ground medical ward,
there were 36 beds within ICU
and children’s high care which
could be used in a pandemic
response.
The CDHB also had 32
negative pressure rooms across its
facilities.
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