The Ministry of Health released this – but hoped you wouldn’t notice

When a public service doesn’t want people to see a publication, they release it late on a Friday when the media are celebrating the end of the week and have all but checked out. It’s a common well-known practice.

On Friday, the Ministry of Health did exactly that. They released THIS

It deals specifically with the right of the unvaccinated to be able to receive medical care.

Interestingly, from checking Scoop for their media release, there appears to be none.

So is there anything of interest in the document? You bet….

The whole document is worth reading – but here’s the key statements:

Routine testing of asymptomatic individuals prior to consultation would identify some infectious individuals and decrease the risk of transmission….

Testing may also provide additional benefit to the individual and their contacts through earlier diagnosis of disease….

Rapid Antigen Tests are less sensitive than RT-PCR but have been shown to accurately identify most infectious individuals….

Testing as a screening tool vs targeted testing: Testing of individuals for COVID-19 can provide a high degree of reassurance that an individual does not have active infection

Asymptomatic infection is the issue, not the vaccination status of the patient

And what about this bit…

When there is high COVID-19 vaccine coverage (i.e., above 80 percent of eligible people are fully vaccinated), transmission is more likely to occur from a vaccinated than an unvaccinated individual.

Read that again to yourself. Slowly.

Fortunately the Ministry of Health released this when the media were sleeping – or were they?