{"id":9568,"date":"2024-04-15T05:09:41","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T17:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=9568"},"modified":"2024-04-15T05:09:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T17:09:41","slug":"fears-sick-people-will-soldier-on-at-work-with-pseudoephedrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=9568","title":{"rendered":"Fears sick people will &#8216;soldier on&#8217; at work with pseudoephedrine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A leading epidemiologist is worried the return of pseudoephedrine to pharmacy shelves this winter could lead to a return of a culture of people &#8220;soldiering on&#8221; at work or school when suffering with respiratory and infectious diseases like Covid-19.<\/p>\n<p>University of Otago public health professor Michael Baker said pseudoephedrine masks Covid-19 symptoms, meaning people could go back to work or school when they are still unwell and contagious.<\/p>\n<p>Legislation reclassifying pseudoephedrine from a Class B to a Class C controlled drug\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/513863\/bill-to-make-pseudoephedrine-based-medicines-available-over-the-counter-passes-third-reading\">passed its final reading this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine have been banned for 12 years over worries that the drug could be used to make methamphetamine.<\/p>\n<p>Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing the medicine, Associate Health Minister David Seymour\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/514088\/pseudoephedrine-could-be-back-on-the-shelves-as-soon-as-june\">said on Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June.<\/p>\n<p>Baker said when cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine were last available they were marketed &#8220;as a way to manage your symptoms so that you could &#8216;soldier on'&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was the idea that it was good to get back to work. It was part of our culture &#8211; we weren&#8217;t going to let a respiratory infection get in our way of going to school and all these other things.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now we&#8217;ve learned that it&#8217;s actually a very bad idea, it&#8217;s antisocial, to go to work, school, and social events, and infect people around you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hopefully that&#8217;s a lesson that is now very well-established.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A leading epidemiologist is worried the return of pseudoephedrine to pharmacy shelves this winter could lead to a return of a culture of people &#8220;soldiering on&#8221; at work or school when suffering with respiratory and infectious diseases like Covid-19. University of Otago public health professor Michael Baker said pseudoephedrine masks Covid-19 symptoms, meaning people could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9570,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9568\/revisions\/9570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}