Gore is the new Covid-19 capital of the South, but no-one really knows why.
The town has bucked the trend being experienced in most other places in Otago and Southland — where active cases of Covid-19 are slowly on the decrease — by having recorded a steady increase in cases for the past three weeks.
On Wednesday, the most recent day when the Southern District Health Board updated regional case numbers, there were 192 active cases in Gore, up from 149 the previous week and 136 the week before that.
Case numbers in the neighbouring regions of Southland and Clutha were down during the same time period, from 244 to 203 and from 180 to 131 respectively.
Anecdotally, clinicians suspected "Covid complacency" meant that basic public health measures such as mask usage were not being observed by an increasing number of people.
Gore Medical Centre GP Andrew Ure said the practice had noticed an increase in all respiratory disease among patients, including RSV, influenza and Covid-19.
"It has certainly been busier ... on a daily basis we have been getting between 10 and 16 notifications, the practice has about 8000 patients, whereas in March when the thing peaked for us, we were getting 50 or so notifications a day, so we are well below what we were getting."
The medical centre was fortunate that, unlike many practices around New Zealand, it remained well-staffed and its employees had generally maintained their health, meaning it had not gone through the extreme stress some places had experienced in trying to maintain care, Dr Ure said.
However, Covid had placed an additional burden on the practice which needed to be met.
"We have had to adapt what we are doing and some of our chronic care management has been on hold, but we have been really fortunate to have good nursing numbers and good systems set up in advance so we have been able to do telephone triage, even when staff have been unwell and working from home," Dr Ure said.
"That has been our biggest challenge, because if you lose staff it seriously impacts on the level of care you are able to provide."
On Monday, the practice set a record of 50 telephone consultations in a single day, Dr Ure said.
Any acute cases could be transferred to Gore Hospital, although Dunedin Hospital remained the main destination for any locals severely afflicted by Covid, Dr Ure said.
"Gore Hospital has been very good and has stepped up its capacity to provide immediate care, even if it’s just to stabilise a patient, but the ongoing care is given in Dunedin."
Yesterday there were 427 new cases of Covid-19 in the south, from a national total of 4869 reported by the Ministry of Health.
There were 16 deaths reported, none in the south.
There were 24 people in southern hospitals who had Covid-19, and the 8MED ward in Dunedin Hospital, where there was an outbreak of the disease earlier this week, remained closed to visitors last night except on compassionate grounds.
