Daily Archives: March 23, 2020

COVID-19 Update 23 March 2020

This entry was posted in Health promotion News and tagged coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic Tarawera Medical Centre on by

Today has been a crazy day with the change in the way we have to run the practice to keep our patients safe and with the escalation to pandemic alert level three.

Our team worked brilliantly under trying conditions with internet access lost and severe limitations on phone capacity due to the volume of calls. Despite this we managed to safely attend to every patient that arrived at the practice, issued over six times the number of scripts we do in the day and were continually on surgery landlines and personal mobile phones to deal with patient issues remotely.

It is important to emphasise that as an essential service the surgery and pharmacies remain operational regardless of the alert level. There is no need to panic and request scripts earlier than you normally would. We will be there to help deal with your issues when you need us.

We anticipate that tomorrow will run as smoothly as today but should be an improvement as the internet returned just before we closed at 6pm tonight. Spark is arranging additional phone lines for us and we will be exploring video consultation options. Tomorrow will also see the start of influenza vaccination clinics as advised in an earlier post today.

Influenza Vaccine 2020

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The annual influenza vaccine is now available. The priority is to initially maximise coverage for patients eligible for free vaccination. This group is all pregnant women, everyone over 65 or those under 65 with diabetes or a chronic heart or lung condition. Full definitions available at fightflu.co.nz

From 13 April the influenza vaccine will be available to everyone else that wishes to self fund vaccination.

Because the aim of influenza vaccine is to reduce infection vaccinations will only be offered in the afternoons between 2:30pm and 4pm. This will avoid the situation of well people having to wait with sick people during the busy morning sessions.

To keep healthy patients attending for vaccination out of the main surgery Influenza vaccines will be done in the Pathlab part of the building. This will be only for people eligible for free vaccines until 13 April. This will be on first come first served basis and constrained by the number of vaccines we have available. We have our first batch available and another on order.

There may be limited capacity in the surgery for waiting the suggested 20 minutes after the vaccination so it would be ideal if you could come with another person so that you can wait in your car following vaccination.