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COVID modelling leader urges Kiwis to not be fatalistic about the disease

Azriel Taylor
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Animation of Coronavirus  Fusion Medical Animation

Dr Dion O'Neale is a leader of COVID modelling in Aotearoa and is concerned about the changing attitude toward the disease.

Dr O'Neale is concerned New Zealanders are getting complacent and with so many people getting Covid he can understand why. 

Omicron has caused a major spike in daily cases since the start of the year and poses significant challenges for the experts trying to model the numbers. 

O'Neale says we no longer have the contact tracing capacity to track every infection, and we can no longer use PCR testing for every case, which is the best kind because it is "highly sensitive".

Credit to Ministry of Health

However, Dr O'Neale wants to encourage New Zealanders to "not become fatalistic about this," and to keep declaring COVID test results on My COVID Record.

It's become a concern to modelling teams that people are no longer announcing their results and has decreased their confidence in the numbers they put out. 

"The concern with people wanting to just 'get COVID out of the way', is even if your total number of infections over the course of an outbreak is the same, we'd like to spread them out evenly over that outbreak."

O'Neale says having a high number of infections happening at once means there are a lot more people missing from their workplaces, and needing to go to hospitals at the same time. 

This causes supply chain issues across the country and puts unnecessary strain on the healthcare system.

O'Neale also wants people to be aware they can be re-infected and natural immunity will wane over time.  

However, Dr O'Neale offers some hope, explaining if we try our best to slow the rate of infection, evidence suggests we can reduce our total number of infections.