For older people and frail people, the long-term benefit of medicines reduces and the potential for harm from adverse effects increases. When the benefit–risk balance changes in this way, medicine review and optimisation are important to simplify the therapeutic regimen, reduce inappropriate medicines and minimise risks. In this article, pharmacist prescriber Linda Bryant uses two case studies to illustrate important considerations during medicine reviews
No new cases of COVID-19
No new cases of COVID-19

There are no new cases of COVID-19 to report in New Zealand today.
Nine previously reported cases have now recovered, so our total number of active cases is 61.
Our total number of confirmed cases remains at 1,713.
Yesterday laboratories processed 6,846 tests for COVID-19, bringing the total number of tests completed to date to 1,298,455.
Pakistan men’s cricket team
Laboratories are processing the team’s day 9 swabs, which were taken yesterday. Full results are pending.
Contact Tracing
The effectiveness of New Zealand’s contact tracing activities is measured and reported against performance metrics known as “COVID-19 Disease Indicators” that include contact tracing indicators.
As part of our regular reviews of our reporting and metrics, a technical issue with the time stamp data fields, affecting reports for the period between 11 August and 10 September, has now been rectified.
Corrected data is now available on the Ministry’s website.
NZ COVID Tracer
NZ COVID Tracer now has 2,392,500 registered users.
Poster scans have reached 132,574,936 and users have created 5,347,988 manual diary entries.