Will we lose our last Covid 19 protection?

This is our chance to show we still care about each other

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has hinted that the last remaining protections against Covid 19 in Aotearoa could end soon. The mandatory seven-day self-isolation requirement for Covid-19 is up for review at the end of this month. Now is the time to make your voice heard to protect your community.

Aotearoa Covid Action are a group of doctors, health experts, educators, business leaders, and parents - as a collective, they’re deeply concerned about a potential change to self-isolation rules.

“We know that this would be a step in the wrong direction, with substantial risk of increased Covid transmission, deaths and long-term health problems, damage to our economy through illness-related staff shortages, and overloading our already struggling healthcare system.”

“There is extensive evidence on the health risks we incur with each Covid infection – ranging from profoundly disabling fatigue and brain damage, to life threatening heart disease, and more. Risks increase with each reinfection, our immune systems become less able to fight off other serious infections, and in some Covid persists for two or more years.”

As a parent, I’m also really worried about a potential change - not just for my vulnerable tamariki but for all tamariki. Newborn babies to nine year-olds make up the largest age group hospitalised with covid of anyone under 60 in Aotearoa.

Covid rules protecting the community were dropped last September. Crucially the requirement to wear masks was lost then. Mask wearing, even in health settings, is not common anymore despite the risks. But the seven-day isolation period for people with Covid 19 has been the last remaining, and crucially important, community protection.

It means tamariki can go to school without sitting next to a sick child with Covid 19, it saves people who have used all their sick leave from facing a second, third, or even fourth bout of Covid 19 from a sick colleague in a meeting. You can go to a gig without risking the person next to you willingly spreading Covid 19. Of course some people will always purposefully spread potentially deadly illnesses. But this rule created a social contract that set an expectation of caring for the people around you.

Without it, so many will be at risk. And we will lose what little gains we made in protecting disabled and medically fragile people. But it’s not just those people at risk. We protect pregnant people, people who will develop Long Covid, people who already have Long Covid, people who will develop heart and autoimmune conditions as a result of Covid reinfection.

In May last year, the Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa begged the Government to protect tamariki, teachers, and support workers in schools. They said: “As winter arrives, NZ should urgently introduce a Covid-19 Action Plan for Schools to support children’s access to education and to protect children, school staff, and their families from Covid-19 and from the return of other winter respiratory infections.”

This did not happen.

We cannot also lose this final protection, especially when we have lost all other protections. You can help - this is a call to help your community, to help families like mine, to help your elderly neighbour, to help the new baby born today, to help the mother fighting cancer, the father with ALS…

Credit: Cleopatriia

Please consider emailing: Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, Health Minister Ayesha Verrall, Minister for Disability Issues Priyanca Radhakrishnan, and your local MP (find them here).

Simply cut and paste the following into your email list: c.hipkins@ministers.govt.nz, a.verrall@ministers.govt.nz, p.radhakrishnan@ministers.govt.nz

And include your local MP.

Credit: Cleopatriia

Telling your own story and giving your reasons why you want to protect your family and community from Covid 19 as much as you can, is ideal. But if you can’t think of what to write, Covid Action Aotearoa have provided a template which you can use.

I made a point of also saying that sick leave for Covid 19 isolation is desperately needed. Nobody should have to choose between feeding their family or spreading disease. We did this as a whānau exercise, and I included comments from my tamariki because their voices deserve to be heard too. There’s no wrong way to write to the PM. Speak from your heart, share your values, and you can’t go wrong.

Huge thanks to Covid Action Aotearoa for this great template.

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Dear Prime Minister Hipkins, Minister Verrall, Minister Radhakrishnan, and my local MP,

I am very concerned to see consideration being given to ending the mandatory seven-day Covid-19 isolation period. We have few protections left that reduce Covid transmission. With waning vaccine immunity and continuing evolution of variants, limited use of masks, and little progress on cleaning indoor air, this isolation period is crucial in limiting spread of this dangerous virus.

As Maria van Kerkhove at the WHO said last Saturday, “This virus continues to circle the globe. It’s changing, it’s (re)infecting, it’s killing, it’s causing long term harm …. Governments need to sustain critical actions to prevent infection.”

Research has evidenced that Covid infection has long term effects– including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, brain damage, and more. Our immune systems are damaged, reducing our ability to fight serious infections, and Covid can persist in our bodies for at least two years. All these effects occur after symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, in children and in adults of all ages. Every time we get infected our chances of serious long-term effects are increased. After reinfection we stand a 20% chance of long-term impacts (1). This is a chronic disease burden we just can’t afford to ignore – it is “so large as to be unfathomable” according to immunologist Professor Danny Altmann (2).

While current Covid-19 levels are low in Aotearoa, they are rising (rapidly in some areas). And worldwide evolution of variants, coupled with short term immunity, means that we will continue to experience unacceptable levels of Covid in our communities. We can learn from the experience of other countries that have dropped isolation periods, where:
-Long term sickness levels have skyrocketed to an all-time high, e.g., 2.55 million in the UK (3)
-Excess deaths have remained significantly higher – 13% above the 5-year average in England (4)

Without mandatory seven-day isolation over the most infectious period, we will face this here. For example, we know the virus spreads rapidly in schools. Our children will face higher levels of illness and school absence; teacher shortages will increase (5). Schools will drive high levels of community infection (6), increasing staff shortages in other high-risk sectors such as transport and social care.

Aotearoa New Zealand made some bold, brave steps at the outset of the pandemic, saving many lives - and we entered this latest phase of the pandemic in better physical and economic health than most other countries. We must capitalise on that by retaining the protections we have in place – seven-day isolation, free tests, and masking in health care. This will give us space to reduce the spread of infection and protect our communities by rolling out clean air in schools, hospitals and healthcare.

A distinctively Kiwi approach to this stage of the pandemic can lead the way - through rolling up our sleeves and doing the work now we will successfully keep our communities safe and healthy, and our economy functioning. That’s what “business as usual” really looks like.

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(1) Thaweethai T et al. “Development of a Definition of Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection”. JAMA 2023; 329(22):1934–1946. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.8823
(2) https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018899512/prof-danny-altmann-the-burden-of-long-covid
(3) https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/punchy-pay-data-set-to-cause-more-mortgage-misery/
(4) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales/june2023
(5) Rhodes, Sarah et al. "Occupational differences in SARS-CoV-2 infection: analysis of the UK ONS COVID-19 infection survey." Journal of epidemiology and community health, vol. 76,10 841–846. 11 Jul. 2022, doi:10.1136/jech-2022-219101
(6) Manica, Mattia et al. "Estimating SARS-CoV-2 transmission in educational settings: A retrospective cohort study." Influenza and other respiratory viruses vol. 17,1 (2023): e13049. doi:10.1111/irv.13049.

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Throughout the pandemic, people said it’s “only the vulnerable” at risk. What they do not understand is their “only” is a family’s “everything”.

This is our chance to protect and care for each other. Will we do the right thing?