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Measles is spreading across Aotearoa, New Zealand. Dr Oz Mansoor reports that the spread has been confined to local contacts so far, and the good news is that most of the country is immunised. The latest official count is 17 that officials are aware of, in Northland, Auckland, Taranaki, Wellington, and Nelson. And more vaccines are on the way. Last week, a number of schools, in consultation with the National Public Health Service, told select students to stay home after close contact with measles. However, a rapidly issued directive from Simeon Brown and his non-health background appointed Director General of Health, Audrey Sonerson – who seems to have followed Brown from Transport – said schools must prioritise attendance over contagion measures. Specifically, Brown directed that only unvaccinated, close contacts were to remain at home. That means unvaccinated non-close contacts did not need to. It also ignores the incubation period of measles of about 11 days on average. It’s noteworthy on a number of fronts: A Minister of Health directing that physical class attendance takes priority over containing measles. This is despite online courses and technology enabling sufficient risk mitigation strategies for both education and health. Non immunised, non-close contacts to measles should go to school per the directive Schools that ordered kids home e.g. Auckland Grammar, were already working with National Public Health Service when it sent youths home. i.e. The situation smacks of Cabinet Ministers overriding health officials. Today, Wellington Girls’ College said it could not comply with this order, especially as they had worked with Health NZ in the first place, which led them to conducting an open ceremony that exposed 900 students to measles. Wellington Girls’ College principal Julia Davidson told Morning Report she specifically asked whether the event, held last week at the Michael Fowler Centre, should go ahead, and was told it could given the community’s high level of immunisation. A student was later found to have attended the event, as well as classes and a prize-giving rehearsal, while symptomatic. The school has put classes online for students in years 9, 10 and 11, while their vaccination statuses are checked, something Davidson said the Ministry of Education said they shouldn’t be doing. i.e. the Ministry of Education, led by Erica Stanford and David Seymour, who is laser focused on his school attendance KPI, tried to stop the school and its Board from exercising its legal and fiduciary duty of care. Online, right wing commentators are mocking people for caring about measles. But measles is not only one of the most contagious infections in the world, with a 90%+ infection rate, many categories of people including children, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women are all at higher risk of serious complications. It has caused blindness in Kiwi kids, including those born from mothers who contracted it. In 2020, 79 children died in the Samoan outbreak, and in the USA, two measles deaths have occurred this year – the first deaths in 10 years – after previously being “eliminated in the United States” – and surging again under the new anti-vaccination culture wars championed by many on the right. National’s gambit may or may not pay off, but it’s been interesting to watch how they have handled the health situation. This excerpt is from the Mountain Tūī Substack
