Covid has begun its inexorable march south- we better be prepared. I consider my vaccination status. On Sunday, it will be 4 weeks since my first jab. I would still like a 12 week gap before the second but when Covid gets to the South Island I will jump. I feel sorry for Auckland but grateful for the relative freedom and safely of the South Island.
I get to the holidays exhausted. I'm just hanging in there and whatever this skin thing is is making life harder. On Friday Kahu finally gets to Student Health after a lot of nagging and they diagnose scabies. My doctor had mentioned it and her prescription of anti-fungal has not worked. Less than a week after treatment the itch is well and truly back. I have a near melt down in the work room after a colleague and friend tells me off for putting a coffee cup in the sink. Makes me realise how run down and pushed to the limit by dumb boy behaviour I am. Fed up, exhausted and itchy, I walk out the door after the last bell and don't look back. It's not just me, another colleague was in tears yesterday. Kahu and I start treatment for scabies- a topical cream, easier to apply, and generates a cool feeling as I lie down to sleep.
I wake up itchless and relieved. Fingers crossed. Takes me back to travelling in Ethiopia in 1996 where disease was of Biblical proportions: elephantitis, HIV, leprosy, polio. I remember seeing a young boy whose skin was white. He couldn't stand still he was so itchy, irritated. It was a miserable day and he was wearing a long coat with wrists sticking out the end of his sleeves. The image is imprinted. The impossibility of treatment makes me think he didn't survive. There was no health system to help anyone and I have pictures of mad people wandering the streets. David and I were magnets, we looked so different the curious and insane were drawn to us: the guy who escaped a prison babbling about political freedom, he was wearing chains and was picked up by guards as we sat with monkeys grooming each other for knits, the mad woman beating her forehead, the immaculately dressed constantly walking man who told us about his shoes, the shouting and scuffling while we were at a doctor's trying to figure out David's mysterious illness which nearly sent us home. After a treatment for malaria and more illness we got tests done and figured out it was stomach issues. The constant itching and using all our tea tree oil to get respite. Bed bugs, mosquitos and figuring out we were carrying fleas.
Back to Christchurch, 2021 and the comparative safety of New Zealand where Covid is the looming threat and vaccination the universal topic of conversation.
3rd October- New Zealand's Delta variant outbreak spread beyond the largest city of Auckland, prompting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday to put additional regions into a snap lockdown. There were 32 new coronavirus cases on Sunday in Auckland, which has been in lockdown since mid-August, and two cases in the Waikato region, some 147 kilometres (91 miles) south of Auckland. Ardern said parts of the region will go into a five-day lockdown.
5th October - 24 community cases of COVID-19, including one historical; two border cases including one historical; more than 55,500 vaccines doses administered yesterday.
6th October- There were 39 new cases of Covid-19 in the community. A man in his 50s died from covid-19 after spending 40 days in intensive care at Middlemore Hospital. Thirty of today's cases are in Auckland and nine are in Waikato.\
7th October- Twenty-nine new community cases were reported today, including five in Waikato. All of the Waikato cases are linked but there are seven in Auckland yet to be linked.
There are now 22 cases in Waikato in the current outbreak, and Waitomo and Waipā districts will move to level 3 from 11.59pm tonight.
- There are a total of 1448 community cases in this outbreak
- Two new cases have been detected in MIQ
- There are 10 active sub-clusters in Auckland, down from 12 yesterday.
- There are 23 people in hospital with Covid-19, with four in ICU
Leading epidemiologists say everyone in New Zealand should plan to encounter Covid-19 before Christmas, and they had better be prepared.
The beginning of the holidays is indeed a relief and I start to tidy some of the house build jobs. Pete comes round on his Monday off to fix the laundry door and redo finishes. I make him lunch and he helps secure the bed heads to the wall. They've been annoyingly loose and bang against the wall. I drop off boots for soling, see Greg about picture framing, organise a PPTA womens' brunch, tidy up correspondence, find a frame for the main bathroom mirror, buy a dresser, and generally get odds and sods under control. The piles of laundry, however, defeat me. I'm filing my clothes and sheets into separate piles from Kahu's. It's hard not to get OCD at this point as scabies is so transmissable. On Tuesday the constant irritation itch has morphed to what I assume if parasite activity itch. By Wednesday evening I decide to redose myself with pyrethrum rather than wait the recommended week which is the life cycle of the scabies mites. These buggars have hatched at different times. I'm not overjoyed to add more chemicals to my biosystem but I can't live with this parasite. I lie in bed and feel the cool relief of the insecticide crossing my finger that this will get most of them. This process is time consuming and absorbing. I'm grateful for the time and space of school holidays.
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