After the craziness of the past 2 days things today were busy but smooth. It was great to have the Community Based Assessment Centre (CBAC) start operation in Whakatane. Dr. Rachel Shouler played a pivotal role as Clinical Director in getting this established and Dr. Beth Walsh worked the first shift of the CBAC. This is a drive through service at the Memorial Hall in Whakatane that is to assess anyone with respiratory symptoms and do swabs for testing if needed. This helps keep people at risk of having COVID-19 away from General Practice and allows us to keep doing what we need to for all the other usual problems.

As an essential service we remain open all our normal hours. Things have to work a bit differently at present. The waiting room is locked so if you phone and we make an appointment for you to come to the surgery just knock on the door and then stand back behind the red lines and wait for a nurse to open the door. They will ask you some questions and let you in when required. Help us by keeping the safe 2m distance apart.

We managed to administer another batch of influenza vaccines again today. This was again done from the PathLab side of the Medical Centre. We are still waiting on delivery of the vaccines we have ordered but did manage to source some locally today and after making a few calls to people who had missed out yesterday and a few more who had called in today we had a clinic up and running within 30 minutes. The jungle drums soon had a good line of people waiting and promptly vaccinated. We hope to have a good supply of vaccines within the next couple of days.

The influenza vaccine clinics will continue to run from the PathLab entrance. This means queueing outside so please remember your sunscreen and a sunhat and remember to keep your 2m distances apart. It has been really great to run these clinics and we really have appreciated the positive mood, patience and understanding of our patients. We’re in a tough situation together and I doubt there is a nicer community than the one we are privileged to serve in Kawerau.

Remember that it is crucial to stick to the rules of the lockdown. This is our one chance to do it right and avoid the explosion of cases that other countries are facing. Undermining the effort by breaking the rules will mean we do the hard yards but won’t reap the full benefit and so will prolong the pain.