More than a year after the Government launched a top-level advisory group on Long Covid, leading experts worry sufferers are still being let down by the health system. Those concerns have been aired in a series of just-released video interviews, as the Ministry of Health says it’s impossible to quantify how many people are living Read more
Posts Tagged ‘COVID-19’
Covid emergency over … suffering continues
Thursday, May 11th, 2023
Just because the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the Covid-19 health emergency is over, it doesn’t mean everything’s OK. Far from it. It’s still a global health and welfare threat, WHO officials say. We can expect the same devastating health and social consequences will continue to plague us. The virus keeps evolving and spreading. Many Read more
Church removes all restrictions but Covid may be back to bite
Monday, April 24th, 2023
It seems no sooner than all Covid restrictions have been lifted from Catholic churches – the sneeze-proof face mask, the empty holy water stoup, the contactless signs of peace, that a selection of lurgies have made themselves known. The rising number of Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths suggest we could be in for another rough Read more
Nurse shortage a global health emergency
Monday, April 3rd, 2023
A shortage of nurses across the world has created a global health emergency. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) estimates 13 million nurses will need to be replaced within the coming years. ICNs March 2023 report says the global nursing shortage was as high as 30.6 million in 2019. That was before the pandemic. The Read more
Baby blood case: Parents accept that some blood products from vaccinated donors may have to be used
Monday, December 5th, 2022The strange case of parents wanting ‘unjabbed’ blood for their baby has reignited Covid conspiracies thought lost to 2021. Tony Wall and Nikki Macdonald explain that the family are ‘realistic’ about what lies ahead, along with the other key factors at play. The parents of the baby at the centre of the “unjabbed blood” case Read more
Blank white sheets of paper: free speech protest symbols
Thursday, December 1st, 2022
They have become a symbol of China’s recent wave of protests: Blank, white sheets of paper held aloft by demonstrators to signify their opposition to anti-virus lockdowns, censorship and freedom of speech. As videos of crowds holding up paper sheets and chanting slogans flooded the internet last weekend, Chinese-language social media posts have come to Read more
Did faith fall off a cliff during COVID?
Thursday, November 24th, 2022
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many lost the habit of churchgoing after almost every church in the country closed down their in-person services and shifted online. But did some of them give up on God? Sociologists like Michael Hout want to know. Hout, a professor of sociology at New York University, has long tracked the Read more
Covid choir ban evidence flawed
Thursday, November 24th, 2022
A new study is challenging health evidence that led a worldwide choir ban during the Covid-19 pandemic. Choir practices and performances were forbidden for 18 months after a damning health report into one of the first US Covid-19 outbreaks among a church choir. Fifty-three people who attended the March 2020 choir practice developed symptoms. The Read more
What do we know about Omicron subvariants XBB and BQ.1?
Monday, November 14th, 2022
Australia’s Covid-19 case numbers are on the rise again, with health officials signalling the arrival of new Omicron subvariants as a new wave begins. It’s the first sustained uptick since the “winter wave” of Omicron subvariant BA.5, University of Melbourne public health researcher Nancy Baxter told RN Breakfast on Friday. “You have things like wastewater Read more
Principals expect pandemic’s disruption to learning will take years to make up for
Thursday, November 3rd, 2022Nearly three years of pandemic-related disruption has damaged learning in some schools and left others almost unscathed. In some areas principals warned it could take years for children to catch up on what they have missed, while others said achievement was no different from before the pandemic. Schools visited by RNZ also described effects including Read more