Public Health pharmacist and outreach vaccinator Christopher Leung, setting up the measles pop-up clinic at the Manukau Super Clinic. Photo: Supplied
Measles vaccination efforts are ramping up in Auckland communities, with pop-up clinics, door-to-door campaigns and pharmacies all doing their part.
There are currently 17 known cases of measles nationwide. Auckland and Wellington have the highest case numbers - with thousands of students exposed across three high schools.
The Health Minister said about 117,000 measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines were in storage, and 28,000 more were on their way.
Some health sector workers in Auckland observed more people were enquiring about their vaccination status, or getting their MMR vaccinations, amid increasing case numbers - with the latest case being in Auckland.
Pharmacist Vicky Chan, who runs the Pakuranga Unichem in East Auckland, said they usually ran a walk-in childhood vaccination clinic on Saturdays, even before the oubreak.
But this past week, she'd seen a lot more people coming through for the MMR vaccine.
"On Saturday we had three times more of our families bringing [their children] in for the 12 months and 15 months [vaccination], which is very encouraging," she said.
Chan said they served a diverse population in their area, and had received many enquiries from people who were unsure about their measles immunity status, and some were concerned with the increasing number of cases.
Chan's team is also supporting a pop-up clinic at the Manukau Super Clinic on Tuesday and Wednesday, as part of the Measles Immunisation Week campaign.
General practitioner Dr Anae Neru Leavasa - who sits across three clinics, including a clinic at Manurewa Marae - said the clinics were seeing four to five extra families each day, amidst current concerns with the outbreak.
File photo. Dr Anae Neru Leavasa at a ceremony at Parliament. Photo: RNZ Pacific/ Koroi Hawkins
He said while it was not a "huge influx", it remained a strain on existing limited staffing.
"This is happening on the background of access issues, I know that our families are coming in, we're trying to be as flexible as we can be, they're mostly really seeing the nurses, because us doctors we're really pushed for seeing those who are coming in acutely for other reasons...we're trying to squeeze in as many people as we can," said Dr Leavasa.
Dr Leavasa said they had provided lists of unvaccinated enrolled patients to Health New Zealand's (HNZ) outreach teams so they could go door-to-door to those families.
One of the biggest kaupapa Māori GP providers in Auckland - Turuki Healthcare - had also been reaching communities through mobile clinics in Panmure and Māngere, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Chief executive Te Puea Winiata said it was able to reach those who were unable to go into a clinic.
She said a dedicated measles vaccination clinic was also running every Thursday and Saturday, 9am to 1pm at its Canine Crescent clinic, as well as at its Queens Road clinic in Panmure.
Winiata said those clinics delivered about 30-40 doses of the MMR vaccine each week.
She said it was better that patients who came in specifically for the MMR vaccine didn't need to mingle with general patients in the GP section.
Te Puea Winiata. Photo: Supplied
Winiata said getting measles vaccination numbers up is a long game.
"This is very difficult [compared] to Covid, this is a slow burn, you're getting the numbers in, providing services one by one, doing it slow, it's not a big bang, and big pop ups, it's really being able to encourage people to come in, talk about what their issues are.
"And vaccinate if they're ready for vaccination, but that one-on-one whanau-to-whanau kind of approach is the one that's really working for us to get people immunised against measles," she said.
Measles modelling by the New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science suggested as many as 150 people a week could get infected with measles if an epidemic took hold in New Zealand.
The modelling also found that increasing vaccination rates by five percent could halve the number of hospitalisations in an outbreak.
Current childhood MMR vaccination rates have dropped to 82 percent for under-fives, and just 72 percent for Māori under-fives.
Coverage of 95 percent was needed for herd immunity.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
