busiest he\u2019d seen<\/a> in his 37 years as a GP.<\/p>\nDr Oz Mansoor, one of two medical officers of health for Tair\u0101whiti, said this year\u2019s influenza bout in the region has been \u201cdefinitely\u201d more severe than last year. <\/p>\n
![\"Dr]()
Dr Oz Mansoor, medical officer of health at Hauora Tair\u0101whiti, said influenza in the region has been “definitely” more severe than last year. Photo \/ Health New Zealand<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do get these little bursts of the spread of influenza every year, but we really haven\u2019t had a bad one for some years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re suffering now really seems to be quite bad\u201d.<\/p>\n
Besides influenza, he said other respiratory illnesses, such as whooping cough and RSV, had also been common this winter. <\/p>\n
Mansoor encouraged residents to contact the Takatu Hub or Healthline if symptoms worsen. For more serious symptoms \u2013 such as chest pain or difficulty breathing \u2013 people were advised to head to hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have medical conditions which are particularly common in Tair\u0101whiti \u2013 things like diabetes, heart disease, lung conditions \u2013 [you are] at risk of more complications which can make you then very sick.<\/p>\n
\u201cStay home, and rest, obviously, is absolutely critical. Give your body a chance to kind of deal with the infection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said the pharmacy\u2019s Uber Eats, on an online home-delivery platform, had been \u201cconstantly going off\u201d with cold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2840,95,682,16424,4509,1259,4190,135781,1379,2082,12506,134,28292,78,13347,111,139,69,26953,530,6926,35108,3769,199,279785,23644],"class_list":["post-568418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-across","tag-and","tag-being","tag-boom","tag-cold","tag-community","tag-demand","tag-encouraged","tag-flu","tag-for","tag-gisborne","tag-health","tag-illnesses","tag-in","tag-influenza","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-precautions","tag-residents","tag-season","tag-spread","tag-supplies","tag-take","tag-tarwhiti","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568418","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=568418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}