Meeting Notes PHO Clinical Leads Thursday 19 August 530PM

Meeting Notes PHO Clinical Leads Thursday 19 August 530PM Update from Dr Joe Bourne -

Operating guidelines are being updated and will be sent out. Should be on the website at some point between now and 1pm tomorrow so that will be where you can reference it and be able to say it came from a MoH website.

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Acknowledge how impressed everyone is with how Primary Care has stepped up and is back vaccinating again today.

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12–15-year-old announcement: o Some concern because people have heard that if they have an appointment, they can just bring their kids along. o This is causing a bit of stress, DHBs are feeling the same way. o Will raise issues around vaccine supply, for example if you’ve got large numbers of people walking in expecting to be vaccinated. o For smaller practices, what it means for virus protection and control, what it does to your ques and what the patient experience is like. o Working on the lines that we have around that. Will ensure that the Q&A we have produced in advance is sent to the group. o Currently weighing up if we will do something productive in the media to try and reset people’s expectations about it.

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Pharmacies can vaccinate children under 13 – Not being able to vaccine under 13 only applies to the Flu vaccine not COVID vaccine. Messages around this will be sent out to pharmacies and the sector.

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Plea to prioritise Māori and Pacifica – accepting walk ins where possible for these groups.

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There isn’t a way of prioritising NIBs bookings yet, but a team are looking at the information in CIR which provides ethnicity, to cross reference this to provide a better understanding of more details around who those people are. However, this is not built yet.

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Vaccinating essential workers: o Honour existing bookings. o DHBs are being asked to focus on people who are listed as essential workers. A new category has been defined as 2C, those people who are in businesses which are continuing to operate in alert level 4. o Practices may be contacted by DHBs asking for help around vaccinating a certain group (supermarket workers etc)

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Feedback on vaccinating in carparks: o Fielding - set up a large vaccination inside a stadium today and did about 50% of what they might usually do (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126119918/first-drivethruvaccination-clinic-starts-up-in-feilding) o Note to make sure the cars are full to make it more worthwhile vaccinating a whole carload rather than just one person.

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Can work through more people by having an admin person to each vaccinator.

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Have now got the system where practices who are running their own booking system can just do something called Complete Activities. o This means that your reception staff and whoever is doing the observation does not need to get CIR trained because the only person who needs to enter into CIR is trained. o That training is available now and there will be drop-in sessions run by the DHBs, need to contact the DHBs for more information on those.

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The final version of specific guidance on vaccinating will be part of the operations guidelines for release tomorrow. These are being updated and are waiting to be signed off. Website version will be the final version. 3-page version is not changing.

Update from Dr Sam Murton -

Green stream and red stream – staffing wise, in a small practice, can’t be doing separate streams. Hard to keep patients separate in the different streams. But if fully vaccinated and doing full PPE the risk of transmission is minimal.

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The College is going to draft response regarding this

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Trying to make sure everyone knows that General Practices are open for business.

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Childhood immunisation: o IMAC saying continue but this is not necessarily right. o Possibly need to think long-term. But if we can get on top of COVID vaccination quickly we can move forward from there. o Option of carpark vaccinating should be considered.