{"id":539176,"date":"2026-07-22T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539176\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:33:09","slug":"universal-rsv-vaccination-programme-could-free-up-thousands-of-hospital-beds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539176\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal RSV vaccination programme could free up thousands of hospital beds"},"content":{"rendered":"

International evidence had shown immunisation programmes reduced hospitalisations from respiratory syncytial virus by up to 90%, easing winter pressure on health services and improving health equity.<\/p>\n

In Australia, the ABC reported that New South Wales is hailing a vaccination programme that\u2019s nearly halved hospitalisations before the winter peak as a \u201cfantastic\u201d success.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk to our colleagues from overseas where these RSV prevention programmes have been rolled out and they are just ecstatic,\u201d Dobinson said.<\/p>\n

But New Zealand was yet to introduce a universal infant RSV prevention programme<\/a>. About 200 infants were deemed high-risk each year, those with serious heart or lung conditions or born very prematurely and received the palivizumab vaccine.<\/p>\n

Each year, 1800 to 2000 children under-5 were hospitalised from the virus, with around half of those infants, Dobinson said.<\/p>\n

Babies could develop bronchiolitis, struggle to breathe or feed, need oxygen or feeding tubes, and some required high-dependency or intensive care.<\/p>\n

M\u0101ori and Pacific children, and children living in socio-economically deprived and crowded households, were disproportionately affected.<\/p>\n

The briefing outlines two prevention strategies now being adopted internationally: long-acting monoclonal antibodies given to newborns, and maternal vaccination during pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Studies had shown long-acting monoclonal antibodies reduced RSV-related hospitalisations by 70 to 90%, while maternal vaccination was around 70% effective at preventing severe RSV infections in infants<\/a> up to 6 months of age.<\/p>\n

Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Chile and much of Europe had already introduced infant RSV immunisation, maternal vaccination, or both, as part of their national immunisation programmes.<\/p>\n

Dobinson said it could reduce bed blocks in places like Starship Hospital.<\/p>\n

During the winter peak, \u201cthe Starship PICU [paediatric intensive care unit] doesn\u2019t accept and can\u2019t accept elective cardiac or other elective procedures that need an intensive care bed during the season because they just can\u2019t \u2013 they\u2019re full of RSV\u201d.<\/p>\n

RSV already created a cost to the health system \u2013 hospital admissions, ED admissions, intensive care admissions, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s just the direct healthcare costs. We\u2019re not talking about the cost to families and the indirect costs. So it\u2019s millions of dollars that are already being spent for RSV disease and we\u2019ve got something now to stop that.\u201d<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"International evidence had shown immunisation programmes reduced hospitalisations from respiratory syncytial virus by up to 90%, easing winter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[69003,124,4975,2518,134,2241,2517,111,139,69,1118,9527,51079,2742,26579,810,72643],"class_list":["post-539176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-beds","tag-could","tag-free","tag-green","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-kate","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-programme","tag-rsv","tag-thousands","tag-universal","tag-up","tag-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}