Medical Director update 26 August: the Delta variant
I thought I would give you an update in view of the Delta outbreak. Firstly, and most importantly, once again this is a very difficult time for GPs. The rate with which the Delta variant has spread is obviously a concern. However we knew it was always a matter of when, not if, we would get a case in New Zealand. I have been really impressed with feedback from around the country about how general practice and GPs have stepped up to the mark and moved back to triage, phone and video consults, providing ongoing care, vaccinating, and swabbing. Without the effort of frontline general practice and GPs New Zealand's response to the COVID-19 pandemic would fail - as would the vaccination programme. Dr Samantha Murton (Sam) and I have been busy raising issues with both the Ministry and the politicians. We have been making it clear to them that frontline GPs need to be supported if we are to effectively back the COVID response. In particular, the release of N95 masks to GPs has been an issue we have pushed the Ministry on for the last two months following the sluggish rollout of fit testing. The Ministry has just put in additional resourcing to speed up fit testing to GP practices across the DHBs. In the meantime, the masks have been released for use with symptomatic patients in red zones of practice. We have also been very concerned about the barriers for general practice entering the COVID vaccination programme. We need to reduce as much as possible any barriers to vaccinating both now and into the future. The DHBs now have agreements with the Ministry that our Foundation Standard covers 140 of the 165 standards they put into place for COVID vaccination. What we have seen over the last few months was the development of a system that initially did not consider the fact general practice's, through completion of the Foundation Standard, were already capable of successfully delivering vaccine and did not recognise GPs as experts at vaccination. We have hopefully eliminated much of the bureaucracy around this so as many practices as possible can join the programme.