Covid has seen more than 100,000 inpatient procedures delayed across the country.
Covid has seen more than 100,000 inpatient procedures delayed across the country.
What of the journey of life aside from Covid-19?
Most days coronavirus leads the news and is the key topic of conversation in many gatherings. The urgency of the situation clearly warrants discussion but I worry that the normal "journey of life" regardless of coronavirus continues unabated but with lessattention, advocacy and funding.
A snapshot across major portfolios captures some of these concerns.
A Covid health headline might focus on the failure to build ICU beds causing prolonged lockdowns and businesses to fail. Alongside this, however, the journey of life for health means generally the same number of people are developing diabetes, heart failure, kidney failure and having heart attacks.
Covid has made the journey worse, however, for the more than 100,000 who have had their inpatient procedures cancelled and the more than 30,000 waiting more than four months to see a specialist. I fear greatly for cancer patients on these lists.
In education we have the tragic situation of senior high school students leaving school to make up revenue from parents who had to be laid off during the pandemic. Underlying the whole education issue for what is being called the cohort of "Covid kids" is the issue of absenteeism.
Nearly all pathways to social and economic reform involve education. The following is a table of chronic absenteeism (absent for 30 per cent or more of the time) for Northland children this year. Notice that the rates are high even before Covid struck (it was one in every five students in July) with an average absenteeism rate of around 15 per cent. Table Year; Month; Students with Chronic Absence; Total Students; % Chronic Absence
Many classrooms cross the country have seen gaps in student numbers this year as absenteeism rose during Covid.
Disorderliness, gun crimes and gang activities were all increasing before Covid and appear to have further progressed as our social fabric becomes stretched. Domestic violence has remained high between the two major outbreaks, one of the less visible but just as damaging aspects of what we should all decry as not being any part of a journey of life whatsoever.
Infrastructure, particularly housing, was in crisis before Covid and has accelerated. Closing the border turned down international demand but domestic appetite more than picked that up, and supply is now further exacerbated by stretched logistic chains. The housing journey of life for first-home owners has got harder.
The economy and cost of living attract Covid-related headlines around the hospitality and tourism sectors especially. The normal journey of life before and during Covid talks to fuel prices, which are close to all-time highs, spiralling rents alongside the price of food and consumable items.
In summary, when the headlines shout out case numbers, vaccination rates, testing numbers, MIQ slots and new Covid treatments, let's not forget that routine health, education, law and order, infrastructure and the economy continues on alongside the virus regardless, just as it always did, albeit mostly made worse. Let's remember that these aspects of our journey demand just as much attention and advocacy as the disease of the moment so that as we map the new year coming forward we take the normal "journey of life" equally into account.
