The pathway for foreign doctors to practise in New Zealand is neither easy nor very fair, meaning an over-stretched health system is missing out on valuable expertise.
Cases of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 are now in Australia. While there’s no evidence it causes more severe disease than the original Omicron, early research suggests it’s more transmissible.
New Zealand’s system of managed quarantine at the border may soon be less important, but we could well need to stand it up again quickly if a new COVID-19 variant emerges.
Matthew Hobbs, University of Canterbury; Anna Howe, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, and Lukas Marek, University of Canterbury
New Zealand has managed to stamp out onward transmission of the Delta variant, which means it’s not dealing with a “double epidemic” and has a better chance to tackle Omicron’s spread.
Labor has opened a 56-44% two-party lead and Scott Morrison’s net satisfaction rating has plunged 11 points in Newspoll, after a disastrous summer in which Omicron has ripped through most of the country and deaths have spiked.
Just because we’re in a period of social change, doesn’t mean we have to lose momentum on sustainability. There are six things we can do right now to offset our daily waste from disposable masks.
Some of the omicron variant’s unique properties – such as its ability to spread rapidly while causing milder COVID-19 infections – could usher in a new phase of the pandemic.
As many people have died with COVID in Australia – more than 1,000 – as die from a bad year from influenza. Attention on them doesn’t seem to have spiked proportionately.
After Premier Doug Ford announced “positive news,” I think about the widening inequality in our province, who the news is “positive” for and the death of caremongering.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, the agenda for 2022 includes key developments to tackle the connected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Variant-specific vaccines would undoubtedly increase immunity. But waves of new variants would engulf the population faster than these vaccines could ever be deployed.
The 2021 child tax credit expansion helped lift millions of families with children out of hunger. After those payments ended in December 2021, those families may again face food insufficiency.
People are buzzing with questions about the omicron variant and whether it could help usher in herd immunity. A team of virologists deciphers the latest findings.
We investigated the initiatives schools around the world took to help support and maintain the well-being of their students and staff. We pulled out seven things that made a difference.
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand