What We Did in Lockdown

Lockdown sprung up on everyone in March for six long weeks. While many people baked, gardened, cleaned, homeschooled their children, or worked from home (or all of the above!), we at Arthritis New Zealand kept ourselves very busy. As the country got catapulted into the digital world, we used the opportunity to deliver more content online, made valuable follow-up calls to as many clients as we could, and some staff were called upon to help the Ministry of Health with its COVID-19 response.

Here is what we achieved in the 6-week Level 4 and Level 3 Alert Levels:

1. More than 3000 COVID-19 tests performed by arthritis educator Paula Takiwa for the Whanau Ora Clinic in Auckland.

Arthritis Educator Paula Takiwa at Whanau Ora Clinic in Auckland.

2. 563 Follow-up phone calls to clients to see how they were doing.

3. 200 Contact tracing calls (for COVID-19 close contacts of positive cases) done by Arthritis Educators Cathie Dowell and Lori Davis at the MOH in Wellington.

4. Four webinars with a total of 974 views.

One of the webinars done during lockdown.

5. Seven issues of Enews.

An edition of Enews.

6. Ten written news articles viewed a total of 3025 times.

An article published online during lockdown.

7. Twenty Helpful Tips video clips viewed 2745 times.

One of the 20 video clips published during lockdown.

8. One digital issue of Joint Support magazine.

The cover image of the April 2020 digital edition of Joint Support.