The Southern District Health Board is to scale back the regularity of its Covid-19 updates, despite the pandemic being far from over.
The board introduced daily Covid-19 updates on February 14, when 35 new cases of the disease were confirmed in Otago and Southland, and the regions had 51 active cases.
It announced yesterday it would further reduce its briefings, which it recently dropped to twice-weekly updates, to a weekly social media posting.
Yesterday there were 597 new community cases announced in the SDHB area and 3402 active cases in the region. Today there were 592 new cases.
A board spokeswoman said in a statement all data could be obtained from the Ministry of Health, but the SDHB would continue to provide a regional breakdown of cases every Wednesday - information the ministry does not provide daily.
‘‘Media releases relating to Covid-19 will be released as and when needed.’’
The board’s decision comes after several weeks in which Covid-19 wards in the region’s hospitals have been at or over capacity.
While the ministry does provide data about hospital admissions in each DHB region, it does not break it down to individual hospitals.
Yesterday, there were 24 people in Dunedin Hospital who had Covid-19 and the building’s Covid ward has been at or near capacity for most of the past fortnight.
Seven people with Covid were in Southland Hospital and one was in Dunstan.
Covid hospital admission rates are one of many factors which have contributed to low bed availability in the South, particularly at Dunedin Hospital.
Staff shortages are also badly affecting the whole health sector.
The Canterbury DHB, which has had an average of 200 staff off with Covid-19 in recent weeks, yesterday postponed several major operations after its hospitals reached 112% capacity.
The SDHB did not respond to questions from the Otago Daily Times by deadline.
The ODT has run the SDHB’s regional case breakdown graphic every day it has been released on www.odt.co.nz and the figures have allowed people to chart the course of the pandemic in each region.
The Ministry of Health yesterday announced a further 18 people who had Covid-19 had died, two of whom were from Otago and Southland.
Nationally, 8436 new community cases were confirmed, which meant the seven-day rolling average of cases was 6885 - down from 7507 a week ago.
Locally, there were 244 new cases reported in Dunedin yesterday, and 1496 active case in the city.
Queenstown Lakes reported 90 new cases and 501 active cases, while Invercargill reported 70 new cases and 396 active cases.
