Caroline Fleming, Kiwi who lives in Sydney, feels glad she got Covid-19. Photo / Supplied
Two former Rotorua people caught up in the explosion of Covid-19 cases in Sydney believe Kiwis need to accept the virus will spread in New Zealand and learn to live with it.
But a Rotorua community leader, whose daughter is a doctor working with Covid patients in Melbourne, disagrees and says New Zealand should try to suppress case numbers so the virus did not overrun health services and the economy.
Their comments come as thousands of people are testing positive for Covid-19 every day in Australia.
New South Wales had 38,625 cases on Friday and six deaths on Thursday, including a young, fully vaccinated man who died at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Sydney.
The New South Wales government has announced changes to Covid-19 restrictions in an attempt to manage cases.
Figures also show that in Victoria one in three Covid tests is positive and testing capacity is under pressure. The state recorded 21,727 cases yesterday.
In contrast, New Zealand recorded 35 new community cases yesterday, of which 13 were in the Bay of Plenty, two in Rotorua and one in Taupō.
Former NZME journalist Caroline Fleming, who worked at the Rotorua Daily Post and moved to Sydney last March, tested positive for Covid-19 on January 1.
Fleming, who is fully vaccinated, said she was happy it had happened despite the Omicron "chaos".
"This is the view of a lot of Kiwis in Australia, we think New Zealand needs to just let it happen 'cause the vax rate is so high ... it's so like chaos but it's the reality of what's gonna happen everywhere," she said, expressing her opinion.
In Fleming's view: "Once you're vaxxed it almost has to run free for anyone to ever be free ... we're going to be immune at the end of this.
"We're getting it done, I want New Zealand to get it done so we can come home ... no one can keep it out forever."
Fleming said she did not know anyone with Covid-19 until the week before Christmas when "it went wild" with everyone being social, shopping and restrictions lifted.
"It was just so easy to be a close contact and get it ... everyone who hasn't got it right now is just waiting to get it."
Fleming started to feel sick on New Year's Eve night and tested positive the next day.
"Rapid test was so hard to get ... my boyfriend got up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go try and buy some and he had to go to five shops ... it was so expensive."
Fleming went to get a PCR test on January 2 but "it was so hot, maybe 30C, and people with Covid were lining up for like 500m ... we would have been waiting in it for hours and I was too sick".
Fleming said she did not want Kiwis to be afraid of Covid-19. Her experience was "it's just like a sh**** cold".
In her view: "If you have the vax you'll be much more likely to be able to manage it at home."
Fleming believed there was not much that could be done to settle the chaos, "once it's out you can't eliminate it".
She predicted that in the next two months, for Sydney, everyone she knows would have had Covid-19.
"We did the right thing and got vaxxed so now it's time to get it, knock it off and then carry on with life."
Emergency Department nurse Keziah Hodgson, who grew up in Rotorua and now worked at Sydney's St Vincent Hospital, also believed "New Zealand needs to just get on with it now".
"We're not going to get rid of it ... it's just something that I think we need to learn to live with but New Zealand doesn't seem to want to."
Hodgson said that despite people who were worried for those who were vulnerable, New Zealand needed to "get on with it regardless".
She said in her opinion: "Obviously for the people who know they're vulnerable or older take extra precaution, but the younger people - they're going to be okay and it's not as bad as everyone thinks it is.
"If the vulnerable people or the older people are worried, they can choose to not go out."
Hodgson, who had not been infected with Covid-19, said she was not nervous to get it and had accepted it.
"I think everyone is a lot more worried about it than they need to be, it's out there now, we're all going to get it at some point."
When she started working in October, there were fewer cases due to the lockdown but she said in the past month, Omicron has made it very busy, she said.
Hodgson felt more worried to take time off to isolate than to be sick.
"We were in lockdown until we all had the vaccine and then we all opened up again ... I think that's good because it's something that's not going away."
Hodgson said that when Omicron did spread into New Zealand there were going to be a lot of cases and, in her view, the focus on the number of cases needed to be partly ignored.
"That's what we're trying to do here - a lot of the doctors at work keep saying it doesn't matter about the case numbers, what we need to be looking at is the hospital number", because the issue is not overwhelming the hospitals.
Hodgson said after the lockdown and everything was opened, "we were all expecting this to happen".
She believed it had been a smart decision to lift most restrictions in NSW. Her comments were made before NSW reimposed restrictions.
In her view: "I don't think it's feasible to just lock people down, people want to live their lives and we're all very aware that we're going to get Covid at our own risk."
Hodgson said the hospital was coping at the moment, however, many young, vaccinated people came to the ED who weren't really unwell but weren't sure where to go and didn't want to wait hours for a test.
Rotorua Multicultural Council president Margriet Theron's daughter Marie Bismark worked as a psychiatrist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and was working with many Covid-19 cases.
Theron said she was worried about the stress this caused her daughter at work.
Theron said it was amazing that Omicron was not yet in our community.
"That must say a lot about how the managed isolation facilities are being managed ... they've given us the time to get booster injections before Omicron comes."
But Theron said New Zealand should not copy Australia.
''We should try to keep the numbers down because we do not have large numbers of vacant beds in our hospital and we don't want our medical system to be overrun.
"The economy will be so badly affected ... we should still try to suppress the numbers."
The Ministry of Health was approached for comment.
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