One Health Aotearoa Management Group member Professor Michael Baker, from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington has won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize. Professor Baker has been New Zealand’s ‘go-to’ science expert on COVID-19 since the earliest days of the pandemic, racking up more than 2,000 media interviews…

OHA investigator Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles is New Zealander of the Year after explaining the science of the Covid-19 pandemic to this country and sometimes the world. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presented the award, 2021 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Te Pou Whakarae o Aotearoa, at a gala dinner in Auckland on 31 March.…

Dr Alison Mather from the Quadram Institute in the United Kingdom has been granted a prestigious international partnership award to build collaborations with One Health Aotearoa investigators in New Zealand. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK has funded the four year programme, which fall within their Global Highlight area of…

ESR Māori Impact Scientist Georgia Bell (Ngāti Maniapoto, Pare Hauraki and Ngāti Pu) has inspired pupils from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Perehuia in Mahia about the value of science, by working with them to develop books conveying important water quality testing protocols that will help improve the health of local awa (rivers). The…

OHA Investigator Garth Harmsworth and OHA International Advisory Group member Professor Helen Moewaka Barnes have both been elected to the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi as Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellows. Being made a Fellow is an honour that recognises distinction in research, scholarship or the advancement of knowledge at the highest…

Our summer 2021 newsletter includes a review of the 6th OHA Symposium held late last year, spotlights OSPRI New Zealand Limited and includes a link to a COVID-19 documentary featuring Prof Nigel French and Drs Jemma Geoghegan and Joep de Ligt.   View the OHA Summer 2021 newsletter.

Exactly one year ago tomorrow (February 26) the first confirmed case of COVID-19 arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand. Identified only as “a person in their 60s recently returned from Iran”, the case marked the beginning of an extraordinary period in the life of the country. A year on, what are some of the lessons we…

Researchers from Massey University and the University of Warwick have found that non-dairy stock farmers are just as likely to get infected with leptospirosis as dairy farmers, proving the disease is no longer dominant in one farming sector. People contract leptospirosis from infected animal urine, and knowing the patient’s occupation is critical to combatting the…

New variants of SARS-CoV-2 have now evaded New Zealand’s border protections twice to spread into the community. In the most recent outbreak, which placed Auckland into an alert level 3 lockdown, there are three active community cases of the more infectious B.1.1.7 lineage. While we have seen the virus mutate over the entire course of…

Today’s provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means New Zealand could start rolling out its COVID-19 immunisation programme as early as next month. In announcing the approval, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said border workers and the people they live with, cleaners and nurses working at quarantine facilities, security and airline staff and hotel workers would…