The winter cold and influenza season has hit Tarāwhiti, and residents are being encouraged to take precautions as illnesses spread across the community.
Keita Sides, retail manager at Unichem Bramwells in Gisborne, said there had been a “boom” in demand for cold and influenza products since the beginning of August.
“Everyone’s sick.
“Every second person is buying for themselves and their neighbour or their son and their mother ... we’re having people coming in and their little toddlers have got influenza.”
The pharmacy has been keeping up with the increased demand through frequent restocking of Covid tests and cold and flu products. She said customers had sought out the products across different pharmacies in the city, but many were sold out.
She said the pharmacy’s Uber Eats, on an online home-delivery platform, had been “constantly going off” with cold and influenza product purchases from Gisborne residents.
She has observed an increase in customers wearing masks, and said that residents were “a lot more open” to trying Vitamin C supplements and natural health formulas as treatment. The biggest demand had been for Covid, influenza and RSV tests.
“We are selling out. We’ve got empty shelves, but today luckily enough our orders came in.”
Karyn Sadler, principal at Campion College, said there had been a “noticeable increase” in students calling in sick over the past week.
Yesterday, 91 Campion College students called in sick – nearly one in every five students on the school’s 488-student roll.
The spread isn’t isolated to the Gisborne district. In June, Rotorua Hospital added 18 temporary beds to keep up with the winter demand.
This week, a Wellsford GP called this winter the busiest he’d seen in his 37 years as a GP.
Dr Oz Mansoor, one of two medical officers of health for Tairāwhiti, said this year’s influenza bout in the region has been “definitely” more severe than last year.
“We do get these little bursts of the spread of influenza every year, but we really haven’t had a bad one for some years.
“What we’re suffering now really seems to be quite bad”.
Besides influenza, he said other respiratory illnesses, such as whooping cough and RSV, had also been common this winter.
Mansoor encouraged residents to contact the Takatu Hub or Healthline if symptoms worsen. For more serious symptoms – such as chest pain or difficulty breathing – people were advised to head to hospital.
“If you have medical conditions which are particularly common in Tairāwhiti – things like diabetes, heart disease, lung conditions – [you are] at risk of more complications which can make you then very sick.
“Stay home, and rest, obviously, is absolutely critical. Give your body a chance to kind of deal with the infection.”