Ministry of Health COVID country risk list seems to be out of date

Discussions
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The current MOH website designates category of country risk as 1, 2a or 2b.

We are currently using these categories to classify risk of patients on our electronic request forms to identify patients at risk.

However if you look at current rates as per

I currently count 54 countries with higher rates than Thailand (which is on the ministry’s list).

Should we just be asking about any overseas travel and treating any travel as potentially COVID risk?

@darren.douglass @shayne.hunter @jon_herries do you know if the MoH is about to update this list?

If we learn anything from the overseas experience it is to stay a few steps ahead.

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Hey Damon - not sure, have put it through the channels.

Jon

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Yes. I think we should self isolate all coming from overseas! Those Italian tweets were truly horrific.

I have just heard of someone on a flight yesterday who developed symptoms within 24 hours and is in self isolation awaiting test result his wife with him said she stood in a toilet line on the plane with someone who had been in Italy the week before and was a visiting tourist. At some stage, I suspect we will get community spread and what we are doing will delay things.

I am not sure yet about our tracking software but I understand redcap is being used in some places and they have made accessible and free modules to do this that might be easily adapted for nz if we do not already have this in place. I have rung our EEC (southern Dhb central emergency co-ordination to tell them about this.

Barry

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Thanks @jon_herries for passing on these concerns. I’m sure our group was not the only ones stating this a well, so the announcement today is a good decision.

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