The biggest problem New Zealand faces is the attitude that the country has triumphed over Covid-19.
"We're not over it," says Brien Cree, managing director and founder of Radius Care and its 22 facilities around the country which have successfully kept the virus out. "It is going to be with us for a long time yet – and we are caring for our society's most vulnerable group of people."
That's why Radius is maintaining its strict measures involving residents, staff and visitors, with Cree saying he does not understand why the government is not doing more testing around the country's aged care homes.
"As a sector, we don't understand the government 's refusal to test new residents coming into aged care," he says. "We are still pushing for that and I don't get why they are not doing it – maybe it is a capacity issue, I don't know."
While most of the rest of the country is rejoicing in the new-found freedom of Level 2, Cree says no aged care home can afford to relax its vigilance – and Radius isn't. While definitive figures are hard to find as many countries count their Covid-19 deaths in different ways (for example, the UK has only recently started counting such deaths from care homes), the virus has clearly cut a swathe through rest homes round the world.
In Sweden, according to a report from the Guardian newspaper on May 16, 90 per cent of that country's 3700 deaths were people over 70 – and 45 per cent of them were in care homes. In Belgium, over 50 per cent of the total death count from the virus was from aged care facilities. In Spain, Madrid and Catalonia rest homes alone have produced more than a third of all Spanish Covid-19 deaths. In New Zealand, 15 of the 21 deaths have come from rest homes.
"New Zealand has successfully reduced our numbers," says Cree, "but we know from the rest of the world that this virus can live for a month to six weeks after being diagnosed. We also know some people test negative – and then positive.
"Add to that the fact we are moving closer to opening our borders and, in New Zealand, it is almost inevitable that we will get it back here at some point."
That means, says Cree, that the future for Radius will still involve masks and gloves for certain activites, two weeks mandatory isolation for all new residents and the continuation of their intensive questioning, tracking and tracing system: "I think we will still be doing that at Christmas and maybe for a year or more."
Radius has put in place its own three-tier alert system – full lockdown, partial lockdown and no lockdown. Cree says Radius has successfully kept the virus at bay because it restricted access to its premises around the country about a week before the official word to do so came from the Ministry of Health.
Radius also brought in its own PPE equipment, buying privately after the stocks the government maintained were freely available failed to materialise.
"The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Health both said there was adequate PPE to go round – but that wasn't true. The PM also said several times that 'testing, testing, testing' was the way to go – but we had people turned down by GPs and community testing stations.
"In my view, anyone who works at an aged care home should get priority when it comes to testing. They are caring for the most vulnerable people in our country."
Cree says some DHBs are undertaking testing of aged care staffers "in pockets around the country. But they are working to a limited timetable and are only there for 30 minutes or an hour and can test 10 or 20 people in that time. If you are number 21 and you have Covid-19, what then?
"I find it inexcusable and incomprehensible that the sector is still underfunded and not recognised by the Government for being a world leader in aged care," says Cree. "Nurses are still underpaid compared to DHB nurses – horse racing was given $75m in the budget, yet the government was silent on aged care. We look after some 35,000 frail elderly with a similar number of staff [as racing]. They deserve to be treated better than horses."
Radius also instituted its own pro-active tracking system. Every day staff arrive, they are asked to fill in a questionnaire that covers areas like whether they have any flu- or cold-like symptoms and where they have been and who they have seen in recent days.
"We were in the forefront of inquiring into people's bubbles," says Cree. "We needed to know who was in their bubble, where did they work, did their mum come and help with the babysitting, did anyone else there work in another aged care home, for example.
"Other aged care homes, for example, centred round their individual staff. One organisation brought in volunteers to keep their staff from being overrun – not a bad idea. The only problem was, you are inadvertently opening up access to your facility to people who could bring the virus in.
"Our system worked well – we discovered that one of our staff was flatting with a worker at another aged care home, one that had Covid-19." That Radius staffer then stayed home until he was tested and quarantined.
"So we have managed to keep it out so far and we will continue to keep our guard up. All these practices we have introduced are enshrined in company procedure now. It means we are nimble as a functioning organisation, we have learned a lot, and we can quickly go from part-lockdown to full lockdown.
"It is not an onerous thing, though some staff have had to work long hours on occasion, and they have learned a lot during this period. We all have – and it looks to me as if we will always be in a state of at least semi-preparedness for Covid-19. That will be with us forever."