OUTBREAK!

Dr Alistair Humphrey is late, and he’s worried. He’s been locked in a briefing about a new case of measles just confirmed in Canterbury. This time, several months after the outbreak was shut down in the region, a health worker at Christchurch’s Burwood Hospital became infected. And she’s been everywhere, from the supermarket and gym to a restaurant and busy sports centre. It’s a new case with the potential to launch another outbreak. Humphrey, one of three medical officers of health in Canterbury, says every second counts. “You have a very limited amount of time before the bomb goes off; it’s a sprint, not a marathon. When you get one case of measles, like we have now, you have to go at a million miles an hour and find all those contacts – very quickly.”

Blood tests confirm this new case [which occurred in late September] is linked to the Auckland outbreak, where numbers of those infected in the past few months have surpassed all of the United States’ cases in the past year – a country of more than 320 million people.

“Once it goes, it just moves, and that’s what’s happened in Auckland because they didn’t catch it and deal to it in the early stages.” Humphrey is unapologetic in his criticisms; he thinks health officials dropped the ball, and doesn’t believe there’s enough vaccine available in the country, even now.

ON 21 FEBRUARY 2019, the red flag went up. A 17-year-old living in Rangiora, who had visited Christchurch Hospital some 32km away, was the region’s first confirmed case of measles this year. His mother wrongly believed he’d had the virus, so didn’t vaccinate him.

It was quickly followed by a second case, again in Rangiora; a 41-year-old man who had also visited the hospital and had been immunised against measles, mumps and rubella (the MMR vaccination). Then a third case from Rangiora; a 42-year-old woman and again, she’d been immunised, with one MMR vaccine, which