COVID-19 Care in the Community update for primary care

Kia ora

We would be grateful if you can please pass on the following Care in the Community updates to your networks where relevant.

COVID-19 antivirals

You may have seen last weekend’s media coverage of COVID-19 antiviral medicines. As demand increases, Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand would like to thank you for your mahi helping people most at-risk of getting very sick from COVID-19 access these medicines, and remind you of the resources available to help you raise awareness and respond to questions from patients or the public. 

• Posters for general practices (attached) – displaying a poster in your waiting room may prompt patients to ask you about COVID-19 antivirals during a scheduled appointment, rather than calling the practice separately later.
• Posters for pharmacies (attached) – thank you to all of the pharmacies that have come on board to offer antivirals to our communities. Displaying a poster will help to raise awareness of COVID-19 antivirals amongst eligible groups, and direct people to your pharmacy for this service. Pharmacies are an important access point for antiviral medicines and Te Whatu Ora appreciates your support. We’re keen to see photos of posters on your walls so if you’d like to share one with us, please email COVIDCareintheCommunity@health.govt.nz.
• New translations - Te Whatu Ora has developed a COVID-19 antivirals factsheet for the public, and Health Navigator now offers COVID-19 antivirals factsheets in te reo Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Chinese (simplified) and Cook Islands Māori. 

• New video – Te Whatu Ora has developed an explainer video on COVID-19 antiviral medicines, which will be promoted this week on social media. The video is available for downloading and sharing from the Unite Against COVID-19 online resources toolkit. 

• A reminder to pharmacies and general practices to please update your details on Healthpoint about COVID-19 antivirals supply, including holiday hours.

Mpox (monkeypox)

• Manatu Hauora – Ministry of Health has updated its web content to reflect the recent name change from MPX to mpox along with some other changes, such as noting that medical care and therapy for the prevention and treatment of mpox is funded by Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand.
• New mpox isolation guidance means that people waiting for test results will only need to isolate if they meet specific criteria in a risk assessment conducted by their clinician when tested. Guidance for clinicians is available on HealthPathways and in the Communicable Diseases (CD) Manual. Any questions or comments are welcomed – please get in touch by emailing nationalpublichealthops@health.govt.nz.

COVID-19 Care in the Community data and digital

• Care in the Community (CitC) support is available during the holiday period through various channels, at the following dates and times: 

The CitC Support Team can be emailed at CITC@contacttracing.health.nz and will be monitoring the mailbox Monday to Friday, between 8.30am - 5.00pm (excluding public holidays). Alternatively, if there are queries or concerns regarding CCCM outside of these hours or over the weekend, the NCTS Service Desk at ncts@contacttracing.health.nz can also provide support for most issues and outages. 

• For most CCCM accounts, users will be made inactive if they haven’t logged in for 30 consecutive days. We can reactivate your account via the support channels above. If you need to access CCCM over the holiday period, we encourage you to attempt to login as soon as possible to see if you will need activation. 

Noho ora mai, 

COVID-19 Care in the Community Team

COVID-19 Care in the Community

email | īmēra: COVIDcareinthecommunity@health.govt.nz

133 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011