Healthline calls in reinforcements amid biggest flu outbreak in 10 years

Healthline has called in reinforcements to cope with a deluge of calls amid the biggest flu outbreak in years.

Flu-related hospitalisations are at a 10-year high in Auckland, with national infection rates at a four-year high and rising.

Health NZ chief executive Dale Bramley earlier said the entire health system was under pressure, with the spike being driven by influenza A along with cases of RSV, cold viruses and some Covid-19 cases.

The chief operating officer of Wakarongorau Aotearoa, which operates Healthline, Brian O'connell, told Checkpoint the service was handling about 20 percent more calls in the past seven days compared to July.

He said a normal day would see about 1000 calls but this was now up to 1200 to 1300 a day.

Healthline had increased resourcing by about 10 percent, he said. This meant at any time there were about 25 nurses and paramedics on and the current wait time was 10 minutes.

"When people are calling Healthline they're connected with one of our nurses or paramedics and can talk through concerns and then our team will work with them about how urgently they need to seek health advice or give advice to keep themselves well at home."

Out of every five people Healthline spoke to, O'connell said only one would be diverted through to hospital or calling 111.

He said Healthline could be especially helpful at the moment for any parent who was worried about a sick child.

"Speaking to our clincial team can really help give you that reassurance and make sure you're not going to the wrong place."

About 30 percent of the calls Healthline received were for children under the age of 5.

As a result, O'connell said Plunket had been helping out by putting on more nurses who could take calls relating to young children.

Plunket told Checkpoint in a statement, it was taking an extra 200 calls a day as it helped to support Healthline with addressing demand.

It said some whānau might experience longer wait times than usual.

How can the flu outbreak be addressed?

University of Otago professor of Public Health Dr Michael Baker told Checkpoint, more needed to be done sooner in the future, including stronger advice about masks.

"The problem is when we're at this stage of the epidemic curve we've left it too late because we're already overwhelming the health system. It's hard to change the trajectory."

He said a graded response to dampen down transmission would be a good idea along with continuing with vaccination.

"But now we're stuck in this situation and I hope we can do better in future.

Winter respiratory infections usually went from May to October, Baker said, with the intensity varying greatly year-to-year.

Baker said we needed to get better at rapidly ramping up control measures including mask use in enclosed environments and additional precautions in high risk settings like public transport and waiting rooms.

Employers could also get more active at discouraging workers from coming to work sick, he said, and encourage working from home.

There were also additional RAT tests available now that could test for influenza, RSV and Covid-19, Baker said, which were tools available to be used in strategic ways.

"Some countries do have systems for communicating the level of respiratory risk in the community. We don't have a graded system in place to know when to issue those warnings - a system like this needs a bit of design work, working with community groups, Māori and those that are particularly vulnerable to get a sense of the kinds of warnings they would appreciate.

"We've published work in the past about having a graded system on this for seasonal infections...it's quite a well established approach but we do need that willingness from our political and health leaders."

Baker said we had evidence to draw on from the Covid-19 response and now was the time to act.