Health Ministry apologises after providing incorrect advice to ministers

The Ministry of Health has formally apologised to Health Minister Shane Reti and Finance Minister Nicola Willis for providing incorrect information in a briefing on the Government’s response to Long Covid.

Last week, the Public Health Communications Centre at the University of Otago Wellington published a paper recommending the Government do more to help those suffering from the condition.

According to the researchers, between 4 and 14 percent of Covid-19 cases result in symptoms that can last for months or years after the initial infection. These symptoms can be minor in nature or they can be life-changing, including heart attacks, strokes, cognitive dysfunction (brain fog) and chronic fatigue.

In response to the report, Reti and Willis pointed to the existence of a Long Covid Expert Advisory Group. “We’ve established an expert advisory group to advise us on that,” Reti said last week, but the ministry now says that group was established in 2022 and disestablished that same year.

“Information about the Long Covid Expert Group was last week provided by the ministry to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance. The information provided was effectively incorrect in that it did not specify this group had since been disestablished,” a spokesperson for the ministry told Newsroom.

“The expert group finished its work in 2022 and the Ministry of Health continues to actively review any new developments and provide information to the sector. In December last year, the Ministry of Health internally reviewed the clinical practice advice overseen by the expert group and confirmed that the advice remains relevant and applicable in New Zealand.”

Jenene Crossan, co-founder of Long Covid Support Aotearoa, said the situation showed how far removed ministers were from whatever work is actually being done to support patients.

“It’s deeply concerning at a credibility level when they’re taking credit for establishing [the expert group] when they’ve never even met with it or had anything to do with it. It makes me worried that nothing is actually happening on this in the background and everything that’s been said is just simply placating to make it go away,” she said.

A spokesperson for Reti said he was not intending to personally claim credit for creating a group which was disbanded more than a year before he became a minister.

“The Minister’s comments were intended to reference actions by wider government and agencies over a period of time.”

Beyond the expert group, Willis also said there was a programme of work at the ministry to support patients with Long Covid. The Ministry of Health webpage for the Long Covid programme doesn’t list any documents or advice released more recently than November 2022.

Martin Chadwick, the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer at the ministry, told Newsroom officials undertake frequent “rapid evidence reviews” to ensure the guidance from 2022 remains up to date, with the most recent one being run in December.

Beyond that, officials were working with Health New Zealand to understand the prevalence of Long Covid and had funded three independent research projects.

“The Ministry is otherwise preparing for a more formal handover of long COVID management to Health NZ in order to align with the Pae Ora legislation,” he said.

The report by the public health researchers found Long Covid is a “major threat to individual health, societal wellbeing and economic performance”.

The researchers recommended the Government conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of Long Covid to understand the scale of the threat, reduce infection rates through air quality improvements, mandate masks in health settings and expand eligibility for Covid-19 vaccines.

In the United States, anyone aged six months and up is able to access the latest, updated Covid-19 vaccines, while New Zealand bars access to even last year’s vaccine to almost anyone below the age of 30.