The Southern Cross Medical Library has seen a 65 per cent drop in website traffic to a dozen of its infectious diseases pages in the past three months, when compared with the same period last year.
The decreases, says the organisation, correspond with the period New Zealand was in lockdown and encouraged to follow physical distancing and hygiene practices, to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. The traffic data strongly suggests those precautions have effectively stemmed the spread of many other infectious conditions.
The most dramatic change has been traffic to the Southern Cross flu page, which was down 87 per cent when comparing data from April-June 2019 and April-June 2020. Traffic to the other infectious disease pages on its site was also substantially down, including tonsillitis (-37 per cent), strep throat (-59 per cent), gastroenteritis (-71 per cent) and glandular fever (-39 per cent).
Chief Medical Officer at Southern Cross Health Insurance, Dr Stephen Child said the data is likely a good indicator of the prevalence of infectious disease symptoms in the community.
“Traffic to our online medical library has often been a good gauge of what’s happening with New Zealanders’ health,” says Dr Child. “Last year when the incidence of measles in New Zealand was spiking, we saw a significant increase in people searching for that medical condition online and visiting our website as a result.
“This year, we’re seeing the reverse with a sharp drop in visits to our online medical library pages that deal with a broad range of infectious diseases. That’s clearly linked to Covid-19 precautions that have apparently been very effective in curtailing the spread of many infectious diseases.”
The Southern Cross Medical Library has pages receives more than 3 million visits each year.