COVID- MOH

From: Deidre Mussen <Deidre.Mussen@health.govt.nz> Date: 20 January 2022 at 12:36:12 PM NZDT Subject: Omicron planning update meeting summary

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Kia ora everyone Thank you so much for joining our Omicron planning update meeting yesterday. We traversed quite a lot of new information and as mentioned, this is a fast-moving space and some of this is yet to be finally landed. We will keep you updated about this.

Summary of yesterday’s conversation Government Omicron Update As mentioned, the Prime Minister plans to announcement today at 1.30pm. An email from Robyn Shearer is going out to your CEs and others ahead of the 1.30pm which I will forward on to you.

Unite Against COVID-19 ‘Be Prepared’ campaign UAC plans to launch a ‘Be Prepared’ campaign and we expect this to start in the next day or two. We’re awaiting an update on this from DPMC so we will update you on this as soon as possible, including key messages.

Self-service digital tools The Ministry has been developing a range of digital tools to support the sustainability of our COVID-19 response in a widespread Omicron outbreak, such as for testing and contact tracing. In essence, people with COVID-19 in the community will largely be asked and enabled to selfmanage with support in future. We will share key messages around these proposed digital solutions in coming days and our plans to communicate this to the public, such as developing videos on these tools. For example, a pilot is planned to start shortly which will ask low-risk people who have tested positive to complete a digital contact tracing form. Also, people may receive a text message to confirm their positive test results with details on what to do next, and we may also send a text message to close contacts of cases with information of what to do next. A risk assessment tool is being worked on to help evaluate which people with COVID can safely be cared for in the community.

New videos on Care in the Community We will share links to the new animation videos about Care in the Community as soon as they are available. They are slightly tweaked versions of videos created by Health Navigator – thanks also to Liz Inch in

Northland as you were very involved in initiating this. The videos are excellent and cover isolating in the community, managing COVID-19 symptoms, managing breathlessness, what to do if symptoms worsen and using pulse oximeters. We are working at pace to get the video subtitles translated and ensure they are also in easy read format.

People with COVID-19 declining hospital care when health deteriorates We’re working on a care pathway and supporting communications about those people with COVID-19 who chose not to go to hospital when their health deteriorates. We will keep you updated on this.

Vaccine effectiveness against Omicron Karalyn asked about vaccine effectiveness. The Ministry has reviewed international evidence about this and we will come back to you with more on this. It is possible this will be raised at today’s announcement.

Lessons learned about Omicron by New South Wales Care in the Community Meanwhile, our Care in the Community team had an online hui yesterday with the New South Wales Care in the Community lead to discuss lessons learned so far from the Omicron outbreak. You may be interested in the key take-outs, which included: • Vaccination is still the most effective thing you can do to reduce the impact of COVID. • With a high volume of cases, getting community care right is essential to avoid overwhelming the health system.

• The focus needs to be on community care, not on hospitalisation.

Need to build systems, processes, logistics to allow people to care for themselves at home.

• For NSW, community care has been about giving people selfservice tools for testing, screening (as in assessing needs), and care.

• The most important part of community care (for preventing the health system getting overwhelmed) is the initial assessment (what they called "the bottom of the pyramid") to ensure most people take care of themselves.

• Their initial assessment uses a digital first approach with an initial digital assessment filtering out 80% to look after themselves and 20% needing a more detailed follow-up digital assessment.

• That initial assessment needs to work well or telehealth gets overwhelmed, and eventually hospitals get overwhelmed.

• Telehealth needs to focus on care for those who can't self-care.

(Their telehealth sounds a bit beefier than ours as they referred to recruiting GPs elsewhere around Australia to help staff it remotely.)

• The biggest need in community care is welfare rather than health. Most can self-care (as in treatment) but many of them still need some welfare/social support.

• GPs had to adapt to play a much greater role supporting people with COVID and until recently didn't have much experience in that so needed a lot of support to get up to speed. One lesson

they had was that they should have been more proactive training GPs and GP networks in how to manage COVID patients.

• Asked about support for indigenous people they said that they had to be flexible - for example, allowing treatment at home (eg: meds) that they'd initially envisaged only being given in hospital settings. This was because some Aborigines were reluctant to leave "country" (their rural communities) - we're likely to see a similar situation with Maori and Pacific and ethnic minorities wanting to stay with whānau.

• Their comms lessons were that people trust local sources of information more than comms from the centre and that nonhealth sources were often more effective in reaching people (as they were often more accessible and less jargon laden).

Ngā mihi Deidre Deidre Mussen l Senior Communications Advisor l Health System Preparedness Programme l Ministry of Health p. 021 705834 l e: Deidre.Mussen@health.govt.nz

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