In Northland, the Ngāti Hine Health Trust was spearheading a vaccination effort to make sure the community was safe. Photo: Tom Lee / Stuff
Public health providers are ramping up their response to measles in Northland and Queenstown, hoping to stop the deadly disease in its tracks.
Four measles cases were identified in Northland over the weekend, and Health NZ announced on Monday that a separate measles case had been identified in Queenstown.
Sharon Sime, a specialist at the National Public Health Service, confirmed that the Queenstown patient had been in public.
"At this stage we know there are exposures in the community, the details of which will be published as locations of interest probably [on Tuesday]," she said.
"They were out and about. Not doing anything reckless, just their normal daily life activities."
Sime said the NPHS was working to identify known contacts and alert the public to locations of interest.
"That may involve quarantine for some close contacts ... It may also involve just asking people to watch carefully for symptoms," she said.
Sime also confirmed that the Queenstown case wasn't connected to Northland.
"There's no connection to the Northland cases at all. This case in Queenstown had recently travelled overseas to a country with known measles cases."
She urged anyone who suspected they had measles to phone their local GP rather than visit in person, and she also encouraged travellers to stay vigilant.
"I would encourage anyone who is travelling overseas to check their vaccination status and get vaccinated before they travel because measles is increasing in many countries New Zealanders frequently travel to," she said.
In Northland, the Ngāti Hine Health Trust was spearheading a vaccination effort to make sure the community was safe.
Chief executive Tamati Shepherd-Wipiiti said he was shocked by how many people didn't realise they needed a second jab.
"I walked up and down the city in Whangārei and I had a chat to pretty much every retail shop owner that was open, and some of the customers, and most people didn't know that if they were born past 1969 they needed to have two jabs," he said.
"That was news to most people that I talked to, so it dawned on me that we've got a big job to do to educate people who might be sitting at home thinking 'oh, I had my measles jab when I was at school, I think I'm okay,' that was a common story."
Next week, with school holidays ending, he said staff would focus their efforts on schools.
"Schools are a real hub. We're planning to be outside those kura next week and catching whānau as they come in during the drop off," he said.
"It gives us an ability to opportunistically talk to whānau about their immunisation status."
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