Deaths confirmed amid worst flu outbreak in a decade : newzealand@lemmy.nz

Deaths confirmed amid worst flu outbreak in a decade (www.stuff.co.nz)

submitted 2 months ago by deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz

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This is the damning fact:

Epidemiologist Michael Baker told Stuff it was difficult to properly monitor influenza and other winter illnesses, because high-quality surveillance programmes were discontinued, including the Ministry of Health not renewing its contract for the FluTracking tool for cost-saving reasons.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

I wonder how much it would cost to offer the flu vaccine for free; every year?

Would it be cheaper than the loss from a bad flu? Probably.

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[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz [S] 5 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

It costs about $20 to get it from my local pharmacy. There are about five million people.

Let's assume that the government/pharmac/healthnz/whomever could source five million doses at a good rate and fund the staffing requirements to administer them. Say that is the same $20/dose cost.

$100m or about ten metres of motorway.

The best part is you don't need to do all five million, I think about 80% is enough for herd immunity to take effect. So it's cheaper at $80m.

'flu takes about a week to recover from. So every person that gets it 'costs' their employer a week's wages. Call that $25/hr × 40hr = $1000/wk. We'd only need to stop 80,000 people from getting 'flu each year to break even. NZ had almost half a million cases in 2025.

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