Rurawhe AdrianCOVID-19 ResponseCHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): OK. If members are ready we have the Minister for COVID-19 Response in the Chair. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Chairperson of the Health Committee): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a real pleasure as chair of the Health Committee to lead off the annual review debate on the COVID-19 response. This year the Health Committee reviewed the Ministry of Health and DHBs and we looked at the overall health sector response to COVID-19. Some of the issues that we discussed were around the care-in-the-community model hospital capacity during Omicron and equity in the vaccine roll-out. But I'm just also noting that the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee also looked at the response in relation to managed isolation and quarantine.So from the Health Committee perspective though we reviewed this year the Ministry of Health and we also reviewed nine DHBs in depth. We started each of our hearings by just acknowledging the complexity that COVID had brought to the health sector but also thanking the workforces the people that have been at the coalface and keeping us all safe from COVID—really important to do that at the beginning and the end of each of those hearings. And just noting that our first hearing was with the Ministry of Health and it was on 8 December and at that point we had just moved into the COVID protection framework. But it was before the first case of Omicron had actually entered the community. But by the end when we were reviewing our DHBs often in mid-March we were actually talking to them about how they were managing because Omicron was at its peak.I just wanted to talk through some of the themes that we discussed. With that review in December with the Ministry of Health one of the things we did discuss was the advice that they had provided as we entered the COVID protection framework and the various settings that say Auckland versus the South Island would have been at during that time. We also talked about the care-in-the-community model because at that point this had just been introduced and I think the discussion was around the capacity—because up until then most cases had been managed in quarantine facilities whereas now we were planning to manage most cases out in the community—and talking about the resources that would involve. We also talked about the equity of the vaccine roll-out and some of the lessons learnt. I think what the ministry was saying at that time was the equity team was working closely with local providers and iwi because they were getting ready to think about how they were going to roll out vaccine to five-to-11-year-olds and wanted to make sure that all the learnings that had been gained could be used in that process even at that point when the roll-out hadn't begun.When we started to talk through to our DHBs most of them—because their hearings were in sort of February and March we were actually at the peak of the Omicron outbreak. And so a lot of the questions initially focused around hospital-bed capacity. And I think in general DHBs were managing and they'd put in place ways of assessing patient flow. What they were saying is that you know they did have—all the DHBs we reviewed in depth in the hearings—spare beds available even though we were at the peak of the outbreak. But what they said was that the workforce was very stretched. You know there had been illness within staff and other issues. And so what some DHBs were having to do was just redeploy workforces from other areas so that they could make sure that front-line services were still being delivered and some had deferred some elective services.We also talked to them about the equity in the vaccine roll-out and thinking about some of the lessons that they'd learnt. The DHBs we talked to they were all very positive about their achievement in terms of the vaccination coverage and of those that we had hearings with all of them were 90 percent or above which was encouraging. And I think just thinking through some of those lessons learnt one was about regional collaboration. So the Auckland DHBs and Northland were talking about how they'd worked together to pool resources and coordinate their response. We also talked about the need for close working relationships with iwi and Māori and Pacific providers and also some DHBs talking about their work with the disabled community and making sure that their vaccination sites were accessible but also if people weren't able to get to vaccination sites how they could deliver vaccination in people's homes or in some of their residential facilities. And also thinking through how the learnings from the adult roll-out had applied for the children aged five-to-11 and in particular the focus on equity for Māori tamariki.So I think it's been another busy year in terms of the COVID response and again I'd just like to thank all of those that have been working at the coalface to keep us safe over the past year. Thank you.