The national Director of Public Health has reassured New Zealanders that the current focus on stamping out the spread of COVID-19 does not mean they should put off seeking medical help for other issues and ailments.

Dr Caroline McElnay said Healthline continued to be a popular service, with 14,746 calls on Friday alone. Increased capacity meant the wait time was down to an average of just five minutes.

However, clinicians were beginning to see a trend, both in primary care and Healthline, of people with other health issues taking longer than usual to access medical care because the were concerned the focus should be on COVID-19.

“I want to reiterate that we have the capacity to provide appropriate care so people with health issues should act sooner rather than later. Please continue to contact your GP and continue to ring Healthline,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Government’s technical advisory group was expecting to get advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the next few days about whether people should wear face masks when out and about to limit the spread of the virus from people who are infected but not showing symptoms.

Dr McElnay said it was common practice in some countries for people, when they were unwell, to wear a mask when they went out. That was a good practice that protected other people.

“But there is also some evidence that wearing a mask can also do harm, such as when it leads to people touching their face more often because of the discomfort with wearing a mask, and that can actually increase the risk of contamination to your hand. And, it can also give you a false sense of security,” she said.

That said, conversations around whether it would be beneficial for the wider community to wear masks in public were important and the government was looking closely at the evidence and advice from the WHO.

“But any face masks worn by the community at large would have to be right at the very bottom of our strategies for containment of COVID-19, based on the information that we’ve got about the effectiveness of those strategies,” Dr McElnay said. “We would continue to reiterate the physical distancing and the hand hygiene as the essential platform that we’re building our preventative approach on.”

“The best advice at the moment is that basic hygiene measures, such as frequent handwashing, physical distancing and sneeze and cough etiquette remain the mainstay of our defence against COVID-19.”

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