If you have to choose between killing one person to save the lives of 5 others, and doing nothing even though you knew that 5 people would die as a result of you doing nothing – what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? That is the hypothetical scenario that is becoming more relevant in … Read More
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on the 8th March that the government has secured an additional 8.5 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on top of an already ordered 1.5 million doses, bringing our total Pfizer vaccine order to 10 million doses. This literally means that we’ll have enough vaccines to vaccinate our team of 5 million. These vaccines are expected … Read More
If you have been keeping up with the latest news regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, you will know that the first shipment of 60,000 Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines arrived 2 weeks ago and the latest shipment of an additional 76,000 doses arrived last week. By the end of March, NZ would have received a total of 450,000 doses of the vaccine and the … Read More
I went for a morning stroll this morning down at the St Heliers Bay on the first day of our week-long level 3 lockdown. As I was ordering coffee from our usual favourite spot (Jack’s Coffee), I overheard conversations from multiple groups of people who were waiting in line for their morning dose of caffeine. The general feeling was that … Read More
Just as our memories of the impact of COVID-19 started to fade and the peak of the pandemic seemed to be well and truly behind us, another lockdown was enforced. Auckland went into its first level 3 lockdown of 2021 and the third since March 2020. This somehow reminded us that normality is not yet within sight and we’ll still … Read More
When I talk to my patients about vitamin D, almost all of them know exactly what it does – it keeps our bones healthy by maintaining an adequate level of calcium in our bodies. Vitamin D not only can strengthen our bones, but studies have also shown that it can reduce cancer cell growth, help control infections and reduce inflammation. … Read More
Over the past 6 months, I’ve noticed that there has been a large number of prescriptions for vitamin D. Also, recently, many of my patients have been asking me about vitamin D supplementation in response to COVID-19. Hence, I wanted to take the opportunity this week to give you all a brief summary of what vitamin D is and its … Read More
When a threat emerges just like COVID-19, healthcare systems around the world are usually the first to suffer and are left vulnerable when there is not a robust population health protocol in place to handle the potential catastrophe it may create. When tens of thousands of people are infected with COVID-19 and thousands are dying from it every day; it … Read More
In the midst of a global pandemic, the Pfizer press release announcement on Tuesday could not come at a better time. They declared positive interim results from the Phase 3 human clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine. According to Pfizer, preliminary data suggested their COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective at protecting people from the infection compared to people … Read More
What makes the coronavirus so hard to contain since it reached a global pandemic stage is because it is not visible to our naked eye. All we can see is its effect; the symptoms, the spread, and the deaths. One of the questions that many of us might be pondering ever since our first lockdown is how can we plan … Read More
