“Since we’ve had more movement across our borders, we’ve experienced larger outbreaks, particularly RSV in 2021, when we had a travel bubble with Australia,” she says.
“Already, there have been a lot of flu cases introduced to New Zealand this year.”
Winter is the period when respiratory viruses are most common – an issue exacerbated by the fact that we spend more time indoors.
“Covid is just going to be one of those respiratory viruses that will be worse in winter as it becomes more seasonal.”
Geoghegan says that New Zealanders should take this as a warning to get up to date with not only their Covid boosters, but also the flu vaccine.
“Immunity has waned, and it’s probably quite some time since most people have had a booster or vaccine,” she says.
She explains that vaccine technology has moved move on quite significantly from when most New Zealanders would have received their first batch of shots.
“The new bivalent vaccine includes not only protection against the original strain that first emerged in Wuhan, but it also includes the Omicron spike protein.”
This is important because the majority of cases continuing to spread around Aotearoa are still caused by the Omicron variant – including the new Arcturus subvariant being monitored closely by health professionals around the world.
“With anything that includes Omicron, this [vaccine] should give better protection than the previous version of the vaccine.”
So, how bad could our winter outbreak be? Do we need another major publicity campaign to encourage Kiwis to get vaccines? And where does this approaching infection wave leave vulnerable members of our society?
Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear Dr Geoghegan answer these questions and more.
