I hate to add more doom and gloom to your day, but at the moment, it’s looking pretty grim for Dunedin students. If you’re reading this then you’re probably one of those students, and I don’t need to tell you. You’ve got emails, tiktoks, and an itchy feeling in the back of your throat telling you that already. If you’re not a Dunedin student, I want you to know that we all have covid. All of us. Or at least it feels that way.
I can’t tell you how many cases Dunedin officially has at the time of writing, because the DHB doesn’t know. On the day of writing (Thursday), there were 238 new positive PCR tests in Dunedin, and an additional 290 RAT tests at unknown locations in the Southern DHB area. It is believed that most of the RAT tests were for students in Dunedin, meaning anywhere up to 447 new positive cases were added to the 717 existing cases. But a number of things suggest that is a fraction of the true number of cases we are seeing on the ground.
The Southern DHB has admitted cases are likely much higher, for a number of reasons. Many students are still registered with their parents' GPs, linking their NHI number with an address elsewhere in the country, and so their cases get reported elsewhere. The testing positivity rate is also very high, indicating very widespread community transmission and many cases that aren’t being picked up. PCR tests take days to process and further days to be included in case numbers. There are many asymptomatic cases that won’t get tested and as Rapid Antigen Tests are more widely used there will be more false negatives that won’t get reported as cases.
Last Tuesday, on the 22nd of February, when the total cases for Dunedin reached 349, the SDHB estimated the actual number was closer to 1200. In the week since, cases have only continued to grow exponentially. Some feel that reported case numbers have become somewhat meaningless, and students have turned to their social circles to gauge how widespread omicron is.
It feels like if you haven’t already got it, then everyone around you has. Critic's office is closed, and we haven’t had an in-person meeting since there was community transmission in Dunedin. Yet at time of writing (Thursday), one sixth of our staff have covid, another sixth are living with someone who has covid, and a further sixth are close contacts of someone with covid. The other half of the team are either casual contacts or totally safe (for now).
People are receiving daily messages telling them that the party they were at last week had someone positive at it. And under the new “Phase 3” rules, they can just keep going about their day. It only seems worse for first- and second-year students. Many halls have to take shifts using the bathrooms so that people with covid are not using them at the same time as people without covid. Everyone’s tiktok feeds are filled with second-years announcing they’ve tested positive.
It’s an eerie feeling because we’ve seen it all before. We’ve heard and seen overseas of widespread outbreaks, where everyone you know is getting covid, and life just seems to go on somehow. But Dunedin had been without a single case since 2020. It feels like we’re watching a horror movie that we’ve all seen before. But if we knew what was coming, how are we all so underprepared?
Dunedin hospital was suffering even before omicron hit the city, and our shiny new hospital is still a few years down the track. Labs got clogged up with testing early, reaching capacity as demand for PCR tests shot up. Southern DHB shifted to RATs for the general public even before we made the nation-wide switch to “Phase 3”, with students being told since at least Wednesday that RATs were being reserved for people over 30. Aside from flights, only two locations of interest for Dunedin have been uploaded, and at least a few students we spoke to reported that they weren’t notified that they were at an event with a positive case, despite both them and the positive case scanning in.
Some students aren’t making things any better. From the infamous “Castle St doesn’t get covid bro” quip (the night before it did, in fact, get covid) to police stopping large parties, including at least one “covid-positive party”, there are certainly people who aren’t stopping to think of the more vulnerable members of our community. But most of us are looking out for one another. We're taking things seriously, doing everything we can, and are frankly quite scared.
Countdown is the only supermarket delivering to the student area, and delivery orders have already hit capacity. Students can try and stock up somewhat before they get covid, but flatting with other people means limited fridge, freezer, and pantry space. It also means cold, damp flats, so only cans and carbs will survive long enough to be worth stocking up on.
You can ask friends to get groceries for you but most people don’t have time for that, especially students trying to work, study, and avoid getting covid. OUSA is giving out care packages, which is great, but many are just drinks, snacks, cereal, and toothbrushes and as much as your deadbeat brother seems to think otherwise, you can’t live off of that forever, or even at all. Many first and second years, where the Dunedin outbreak seems to be hitting hardest, have only just moved down here, and given that classes haven’t even started yet, they won’t know many people to call on. Even if you do know people, chances are they may be isolating too.
Many students have turned to DeliverEasy and Uber Eats, but what happens when all the delivery drivers get covid? Not to mention, most students can't afford to get takeaways delivered to them every day, especially given the lack of financial support the government has offered over the past year. “Hardship Funds” are inaccessible for many. Students facing serious hardship get rejected on technicalities while a good chunk of the money never gets sent out to students at all. But students are getting free money from the government anyways, right? Not really. Only 8% of students receive a student allowance, and that 8% receives an average of $130 a week.
There are some serious long-term solutions to many of these problems (better supermarkets, better tertiary student funding, better mental health systems, and a better national covid plan than “fuck it I guess”). But in the meantime, students need immediate, direct government support. Please.