» Home > (Page 3)

Author Archives: tedla55p

How to best prioritise Covid-19 Vaccination in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 | tedla55p | No Comments

Dr Ben Gray*

New Zealand has begun to roll out its Covid-19 vaccination programme, starting with those working at the border, including in the Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) facilities. There have been calls for prioritising other groups such as  those in South Auckland [1] and meat industry workers [2] and the National Ethics Advisory Committee has released a final report [3] on Resource Allocation and Covid-19 that includes a section on vaccine prioritisation. The NZ Government has also developed a Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy [4] but without any detailed prioritisation.

Continue reading →

The COVID-19 house fire and the unbearable silence of fire alarms

Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 | tedla55p | No Comments

Dr Matt Boyd (syndicated from the blog site of “Adapt Research”)

WHO? The Emergency Committee

The international health regulations (IHR) provide for the Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in appropriate circumstances.

PHEIC is meant to be a signal to all countries that significant actions, aid and cooperation may all be needed. Critics have lambasted the late timing of PHEIC declaration for COVID-19 and also the opaque nature of the acronym.

Continue reading →

How best to classify and count NZ’s border control failures in the COVID-19 pandemic?

Friday, February 12th, 2021 | tedla55p | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Leah Grout, Prof Michael Baker

In taking a systems approach to pandemic control, it is helpful to define what is meant by a “border control failure” so that such events can be used to guide performance improvement. This blog proposes specific definitions for the current context in Aotearoa NZ. It concludes that since July 2020, NZ has had at least 10 border control failures (9 via MIQ facilities and one via a port), and at least 5 “internal MIQ facility failures” involving spread between returnees.

Continue reading →

Five Strategic Approaches to Achieving the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Goal

Thursday, January 28th, 2021 | tedla55p | No Comments

Richard Edwards, Nick Wilson, Janet Hoek, Anaru Waa, George Thomson, Tony Blakely

The new NZ Government is to be congratulated for working on an Action Plan towards achieving the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Goal. To inform this process, we briefly set out five potential strategies for achieving this important health and equity goal and discuss their implementation.

Continue reading →

Regulation of alcohol marketing is needed to meet health, wellbeing and equity goals

Wednesday, December 16th, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof Jennie Connor,* Prof Sally Casswell  

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just released the report on its review of their Code for Advertising and Promotion of Alcohol. The ASA is an industry body which develops the voluntary codes that set the standard for advertising of alcohol, and also adjudicates on complaints made by the public when advertisers breach the code. The ASA exemplifies both an ineffective approach to protection of the population from harm, and an explicit commercial conflict of interest. In this blog, the case for regulation of alcohol marketing and the need for urgency is made, and ways forward are described.

Continue reading →