Tairāwhiti data, 5 May 2025
May Day strike, weekly notifications; pertussis epidemic chart; winter illness
May Day strike went well and was supported by patients. But did it soften Simeon’s heart? Will he invest in our health, as we are asking? What will it take to move the government?
I find it hard to reflect on the day; many difficult stories to capture. And the main question that bothers me: did the strike makes a difference; will it help heal Health?
But we did get some media attention. Te Karere TVNZ Māori news reported on the Gisborne march with a 2m:45s minute TV clip. I appear at 1:00 with a hand-made poster from my lovely wife who captured the essence of my message: “Hey, Mr Minister, Get your SH$T together, Tairāwhiti deserves better.”
I’m only on for 15 seconds, and then another 20 seconds shortly after. But I spoke for several minutes on various aspects of how the government is letting us down. Like the T-shirt, I said: “INVEST IN OUR HEALTH”. It’s not just about money, but without it…
Notifications
NZ had severe weather last week leading to floods in the South Island. Not too bad in Gisborne; but wet and gloomy weather locally. This is the month that we usually see an increase in winter illness; more below.
Notification pattern continues with Covid and pertussis leading and some enteric infections. For the week ending 4 May, we had three each of Covid and pertussis and two cases of Yersinia:
I had reported only two Covid notifications to the week ending 27 April, and we now have three as there is often a delay in getting these notifications. We had one Covid hospitalisation last week, making it a totla of 3 for April; none in May yet.
Monthly Covid hospitalisations were 11, 6, 3, and 2 for January to April, respectively.
The ESR wastewater data was updated on 1 May with data to week ending 27 April. It shows continuing decline:
Sadly, Gisborne data is no longer included in the Covid surveillance. It will be interesting to see how much of a winter peak we have with Covid,
Pertussis epidemic
Last week, I noted that just over under two per week over the past month. A higher rate than than national, with less than 100 case notified per week. (With ~1% of national population, we would expect ~1% of cases, or less than one per week)
We had three pertussis notifications for the week ending 4 May, compared to none last week. Here is the updated epidemic chart:
The national data from the ESR dashboard is up to week ending 25 April
We expect pertussis notifications to continue to be at a high rate for the rest of the year. The main prevention focus is for the youngest infants who are most likely to have severe disease and fatality from the infection: a dose of vaccine in pregnancy followed by timely infant doses at ages 6 weeks, 3 and 5 months.
There is emerging concern about increasing Azithromycin resistance. So, a reminder that antibiotics do not alter the clinical course once the bursts of coughing are established, but it can reduce spread if given in the first two weeks after onset. A case is considered not infectious three weeks after cough onset. But the case can keep coughing for many weeks: antibiotics will not help!
National winter illness surveillance
The ESR respiratory illness dashboard was updated on 1 May, showing hospitalisations from respiratory infections (monitored in Auckland only) have stayed at the seasonal threshold for three weeks:
Note the rise in cases during May in previous years: reminder to get the influenza vaccine, if you have not done so yet and are at increased risk of severe disease; or just want to avoid the illness or to reduce the risk of spreading to others.
We monitor influenza-like illness (ILI) through calls to Healthline, and these also show that we are likely to see increases over the next two months:
The map shows more ILI in the South Island, and lower rates for Tairāwhiti and the upper North Island.
FluTracking to week ending 27 April shows a small drop in people with fever and cough:
Again, we can see that we are likely to see an increase in people with symptoms over the next few weeks. Please consider signing up to FluTracking to report symptoms weekly. The FluTracking map shows no illness in those reporting from Tairāwhiti:
In the year to date, influenza (light blue) and rhinovirus (purple) have been the leading viruses detected in both GP sentinel and hospital data, with declining influenza after a peak in early March:
Next week
As always, I look forward to your feedback and suggestions; and any questions on the data. Thank-you for making it to the end!