Surveys suggest doctors and nurses worry about the NZ border

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-07-09 00:01

New Zealand

Local GPs and nurses have expressed concern about risks at the border, and reluctance to open up more widely, in repeated brief COVID-19 surveys. The border was seen as a fragile “Achilles heel” in the country’s pandemic defence. Practitioners felt Kiwis remain too relaxed about the possibilities of community spread. While these surveys were too small to apply across the board, the results imply that the primary care sector believes strategies to reduce local transmission must continue.

Media release

From: New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA)

Summary

This paper presents a primary care perspective on border openings in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study itself is part of an international collaboration designed to analyse and disseminate concerns of primary care in relation to the pandemic. Results from this study show that primary care has expressed repeated concerns about opening the border and see the border as being an ‘Achilles heel’ in our defence against COVID. And the fragile nature of the border means that primary care believes that effective strategies to reduce local transmission must be maintained.

Journal/
conference: New Zealand Medical Journal

Organisation/s: University of Auckland

Funder: N/A

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.