Dr Guy Hatchard examines new emergency department data showing a sharp rise in patient numbers and serious presentations across New Zealand. He argues the deterioration accelerated after 2021 and challenges claims that increased funding and staffing alone can resolve the crisis. Linking the trend to Covid vaccination and wider biotechnology, Hatchard calls for a fundamental reassessment of health policy and greater emphasis on diet, exercise and meditation.
A report published last week by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) is entitled “Aotearoa New Zealand State of Emergency 2026”. It focuses on emergency care utilisation and outcomes in NZ by comparing the year 2015/16 to the year 2024/25. The paper reported a 21% increase in ED cases compared to a 13% rise in population over this ten year period and suggested the solution will be increased funding to upgrade facilities and increase staffing levels. But do the figures actually support this conclusion?
The only statistically valid reading of the ACEM figures indicates a critical phase transition in health and well being occurred in 2021, which we have indicated in red. The Hatchard Report therefore used the percentage figures published in the report as above to compare ED usage in 2020/21 just prior to the introduction of Covid vaccines with the outcomes in 2024/25.
This comparison shows that over the four year post Covid vaccine period, ED presentations increased by a massive 24% whilst the NZ population grew by just 3.9%.
More alarming still, the patients arriving at ED are presenting with more serious and urgent conditions requiring more complex care falling within the highest 1-3 Australasian Triage Scale (ATS).
The number of ED patients presenting with ATS 1-3 rose by a staggering 33% (one third more serious ill health outcomes) between 2020/21 and 2024/25.
The significance of this rise is all the more important, if you compare 2015/16 to 2019/20 (pre-Covid and Covid vaccine) when there was a 1% fall in ED patient numbers. In other words the huge rise in ED presentations has occurred since the introduction of Covid vaccines and is growing despite the role of Covid infections dwindling to insignificance, becoming milder and far less frequent.
The rate of increase in sickness in 2025/26 is even higher than during the Covid pandemic.
The available reports from hospitals and St John show that the 2025/26 figures are far worse than the years covered by the ACEM report and are projected to rise even more steeply. For example, as we reported in our article “The Health Crisis: Policy changes and increased funding are not enough”, Christchurch Hospital ED has treated 14,582 patients in corridors in the year 2025/26 compared to just 3,911 in 2022/23 during the height of the pandemic.
What are people actually falling sick with?
A patchwork of statistics suggest that sickness is up across a very broad range of conditions. The Hatchard Report has published articles documenting increases in cancer, mental illness, mortality, cardiac conditions, and disability along with decreases in birth rate and immunity.
The decrease in population immunity has been highlighted by the 2026 flu season data where the peak of people with severe acute respiratory infection reached 9.5 per 100,000 up from 4.3 in 2025 which itself was a bad flu year. The figures also show the burden of ill health has shifted towards working age people and the young.
What has gone wrong?
2021 saw the first mass implementation of a medical intervention (mRNA vaccination) that crossed the cell membrane and manipulated intracellular genetic processes. Subsequent research projects have found continuing Covid spike protein production among Covid vaccine recipients. This has shown the effects of mRNA genetic manipulation can persist for years and effectively alter fundamental immune processes. It appears that the general assumption that editing of genes and gene expression mechanisms inside the cell will be safe and effective is false. This assumption is based on the supposition that synthetic gene modification is sufficiently equivalent to natural genetic evolutionary processes. In other words it has been assumed that our physiology will automatically correct or compensate for inevitable mistakes made as a result gene manipulation. The evidence now suggests this is not the case, which should prompt us to question the fundamental assumptions of biotechnology, including the extent of risks.
Principles of biotechnology in need of revision
A summary of some key points follows with some links to explore these topics in more detail:
Consciousness is primary and matter secondary. This is a matter of direct personal experience and fundamental physics. Conscious decisions operate at the cutting edge of evolutionary time. Ignoring consciousness has led biotechnology into an evolutionary wrong turn and dead end.
Immunity relies on uniformity of cellular genetic content. The thrust of immune functions is to ensure that the DNA unique to an individual is protected and repaired. Gene editing inevitably results in a loss of this genetic uniformity. This results in a loss of coordinated physiological functioning. It creates a physiological conflicts of interest—illness.
Consciousness is a field which connects our 37 trillion cells containing identical DNA into a single individual. Genetic structures facilitate the expression of consciousness. Editing genetic structure and functions will alter the expression of individual consciousness, potentially affecting personality, intelligence and the stability of society. The connection between consciousness and genetics is also modulated by quantum fields which are beyond the scope of current biotechnology understanding as addressed in our article The Sacred Cell and Conscious Genes
Consciousness-based medicine has been ignored by biotechnology for more than fifty years. Extensive research amounting to hundreds of papers in peer reviewed journals has demonstrated there is no more effective approach to health than systematically taught traditional deep meditation. There have been more than 800 published studies on the physiological and psychological effects of transcendental meditation for example. All the vibrant cultural traditions in the world historically had practices of meditation at their core. The latest research shows that effects extend to improved genetic functioning.
Nutrition relies on fresh food The genetic structures or intelligence in fresh natural foods are a necessary component of a healthy diet. This concept is missing from current paradigms of nutrition which routinely contend that a healthy diet is solely composed of fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, proteins, etc. which can be derived from synthetic sources. Research on the harmful effects of UPFs and the beneficial effects of fresh diets like the mediterranean diet fully support this view. Our physiology interacts with our food sources not just through its chemical components, but through its genetic basis which in turn connects with the field of consciousness.
What will happen going forward into 2027?
The proliferation of gene editing projects in food, medicine and defence has created ongoing risks that were amply illustrated by the revelations published this week in the Moscow Times that a worker in a secretive Irkutsk biolab had died of an unidentified form of plague following a laboratory accident, potentially exposing hundreds of members of the public who have now been quarantined. This shows that the lessons of the Covid pandemic have not been learned. At the same time the downstream adverse health effects of the so-called Covid vaccines appear to be accelerating as demonstrated by the ACEM ED data graphed at the beginning of this article. As numerous ED departments up and down the country and around the world are reporting, the health crisis is turning critical.
It is time to alert politicians and medical administrators that a mistake has been made in interpreting our medical usage data. The trends from pre-Covid years have been amalgamated with post-Covid data, giving the entirely erroneous impression that the cause of the health crisis is a long standing deficit in the provision of health services which has gradually accumulated and now needs attention. Medical experts are unaware of the real cause because they have not correctly examined and interpreted the data. This mistake is generating a great deal of confused thinking about health policy. Hence politicians are suggesting that the allocation of more resources and increased staffing levels will solve the problem. This is not the case. Since the mass provision of Covid vaccines to 90% of the population, more people are falling sick with a range of more serious health conditions. Moreover the problem is rapidly escalating.
Altering the fundamental functioning of genetic elements inside cells has affected immunity and disrupted the basic functions of our organ systems throughout the physiology. There is an urgent message here for the public, the government and the medical establishment. Pause biotechnology use. The adoption of improved diet, exercise and meditation routines will have a protective effect for health going forward into 2027. Changing long established routines can be challenging, but the ACEM data shows that the time is now. Avoid or postpone behaviours, routines and diets that you suspect are harming your physical or mental health. Encourage those that provide benefits. It is past time for a health reset. A stitch in time saves nine.
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Dr Guy Hatchard is a statistician and former senior manager at Genetic ID, a global food safety testing and certification laboratory. Guy's book 'Your DNA Diet' is available on Amazon.com.