Daily Archives: August 26, 2021

Physician, heal thyself. This phrase has been in my thoughts ever since global media outlets, most of them British, started mocking New Zealands Covid elimination strategy last week.

Im a proud British passport holder, and spent some of my best years in London, but not once during this pandemic have I ever wished to be anywhere except New Zealand. That holds true even though were now back in lockdown while the British freely enjoy what passes for a summer there.

As Twitter users were quick to point out, it was indeed crazy of New Zealand to go into lockdown with just one case no wait, 22 hang on, 107 You get the point. The fact that coronavirus case numbers can mount rapidly should be obvious by now, but apparently not.

Also apparently, some British columnists believe New Zealand has become a mysterious socialist hermit kingdom. But weve led infinitely freer lives over the past 18 months. On the Oxford Covid-19 Stringency Index, theyve had crudely speaking 60% restricted lives for most of that time, while we have seldom been over 20%. We have lockdowns, but theyre generally short and sharp.

The lockdowns are also effective: weve had just 26 people die of Covid, a number which and I cannot stress this enough is very different from more than 130,000, the current UK death tally. Our per-person death rate is 400 times less than the British one. And if any British people think thats down to New Zealands being an island, they might want to take a look at the shape of their own country on a map. Luck, and living on the bottom of the world, have also helped us, but not that much.

Its hard to think of any downsides to our approach. Lockdowns are not great for ones mental health, admittedly, but also probably not as bad as having to watch the bodies pile high.

Our compassionate response has also been an efficient one: New Zealands economy recovered more quickly than Britains did, while our unemployment rate, at 4%, is so low that firms trying to recruit staff are contemplating desperate measures like actually raising wages.

Yes, we can be sleepy little hobbits, less protective of our civil liberties than the British. But when infringements are proportionate to the harm they seek to prevent, and governments act competently, citizens are right to be trusting. And its not as if no one dares criticise Jacinda Ardern.

In short, our coronavirus response has been that rarest of things, a win-win-win situation. In the slightly magical animal stakes, we can boast not just hobbits but also unicorns.

As to the hermit line: its not like we want to be isolated. We organised a trans-Tasman travel bubble with Australia as soon as it looked safe, only for the Aussies to mess everything up. If we dont have one any more its not for lack of effort on our part.

Of course our government has made mistakes. Managed isolation bookings are chaotic, intensive care beds inadequate, testing systems far from perfect. Most notoriously, our vaccine rollout is the developed worlds slowest.

But we could afford some slowness because of our previous victories. Whats more, the continuing deaths and resurgent infections in vaccine success stories such as Israel, the US and the UK suggest there are few role models out there, unless one is willing to tolerate a body count of hundreds of people a day, tens of thousands a year. New Zealanders would be more excited about learning to live with Covid if it didnt look so much like learning to die with it. We would also probably prefer not to open up to Covid with a very partially vaccinated population, a delightfully British approach that appears perfectly designed to create the next Delta variant.

Given Deltas exceptional infection rates, of course, our latest lockdown may not work. We have no monopoly on perfection, no crystal ball. But for the moment it looks like the right strategy.

And of course we need an exit plan, just like everyone else, and we may eventually have to accept a few coronavirus deaths a year. But that exit plan, and the opening of our borders, will seem feasible only once global vaccination rates are sky-high and the rest of the world is a safe place for travel.

That, in turn, does not look likely to occur before the end of this year, by which point New Zealand will be in the same situation as everyone else that is, having got the vaccine to anyone who wants it before commencing a desperate battle with the anti-vaxxers.

Im genuinely delighted that the UK has nailed its vaccine rollout, helping protect my many British friends and family members. But rather than mock others, Britons would do well to contemplate their own past and continuing problems with a pandemic that is sorely testing us all.

Read the original here:

Why were happy hobbits in Jacindas mysterious socialist hermit kingdom - The Guardian

"It's going all over the place," said another. "It obviously sucks but we're in level 4 - I think that's the right thing to do."

Kilbirnie's Asian Food Specialist and Pak'nSave are also on the list, plus Air New Zealand flight NZ443 from Auckland to Wellington on Thursday afternoon.

Delta has got people on edge, but it's not too scary for Mayor Andy Foster, who's holding his breath.

"So far it's not too bad, but obviously time is going to tell," he said.

At least one of the positive cases travelled from Auckland to Wellington in a private car. They stopped four times along the way - in Tokoroa, Waiouru's service station and public toilets, and Bulls.

Contact tracers have their work cut out for them.

"The majority of those contacts are located in the Auckland and Waikato regions, with small proportion in other areas of the rest of North Island and South Island," said Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay.

The Director-General of Health was alerted to the first Wellington cases before 9am on Friday, but there were no locations of interest on the Ministry of Health website until after 6pm that night.

"It's been very frustrating waiting for these additional locations to be made public," says Mayor Foster.

But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says getting those locations of interest can be "iterative", and says it's a balancing act of putting out information accurately and quickly.

One of the locations is Countdown in Johnsonville, where last night shoppers were told to leave immediately so it could close for a deep clean.

"We were told to drop what we had and start walking out, and yeah, I was in a bit of a shock afterwards," said shopper Daniel Borrie.

Johnsonville's 1841 bar is another location of interest.

"A 400-gram sirloin [steak] and a beer for $25 has proven too much of a lure for some people - here we are," said owner Jono.

Testing sites were busy on Saturday, as people scrambled to get swabbed in the hopes they can wave goodbye to the virus in this region soon.

Queues were under control though as more pop-up testing centres were set up, including at Te Papa, Sky Stadium and in Hataitai.

See original here:

COVID-19: Jacinda Ardern defends pace locations of interest are released to public after Wellington Mayor criticism - Newshub

An RNZAF Hercules at Whenuapai Airbase prepared for a mercy flight to Afghanistan. Photo / Michael Craig

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warns a mercy dash to Kabul to rescue New Zealanders and Afghan allies might not be able to evacuate everyone they want to.

It comes as the situation in the Afghanistan capital worsens, just days after the Taliban reclaimed control of the country after a 20-year war.

"I am concerned that because of the situation on the ground, that we do need to start working on what the next stage will be, because it does not look like we're going to get everyone out that we want to get out," Ardern said on Saturday.

"There is a certain window everyone is using, to use the secure space available at Kabul airport, but it is an entirely separate issue people's ability to connect safely with the airport."

On Friday it was confirmed the first New Zealanders trapped in Afghanistan since the Taliban dramatically took power have been whisked out of the country on a mercy dash.

American soldiers and other Nato allies are in control of security inside the airport.

But with the Taliban controlling checkpoints in and out of Kabul airport, access has been "extremely difficult", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade acknowledges.

As disturbing images continue to come in from outside Kabul airport, where thousands of desperate Afghans have been trying to flocking to since the Taliban took control of the war-torn country on Sunday, the New Zealand Government made the urgent decision to send help.

Officials have been contacting individuals stuck in Afghanistan and making arrangements to try to get them out.

A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) C-130 Hercules aircraft flew out of RNZAF Base Auckland Thursday morning on a mercy dash to Kabul to rescue New Zealanders, interpreters, and others who worked with Kiwi troops fighting the Taliban.

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MFAT says it is aware of 161 New Zealanders and their families in Afghanistan who are eligible to enter New Zealand, "many of whom we are providing consular support".

Staff are also assisting a small number of people who the Government has determined as having worked alongside NZDF, including interpreters, and those who materially assisted in the Operation Burnham inquiry and on police and aid missions.

Ardern said on Saturday New Zealand was working with its partners who were assisting the New Zealand effort now, and New Zealand staff would assist others once they arrived.

"I don't believe we arrived too late. It is an international effort, not just uplifting our people. We are working closely together to pick up one another's citizens and Afghani nationals."

According to the United Nations' refugee agency, about 250,000 Afghans have been forced to flee their homes since late May, most of them women and children.

Both Canada and the United Kingdom have pledged to take in 20,000 Afghan refugees, but Ardern said New Zealand would not yet be making a decision on that.

New Zealand was looking to further increase its refugee quota, but it was too soon to say what the Afghani makeup would be, she said.

"This will be an area where there will be a large number of refugees in the future and that is something we will work through."

Per head of population, New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of refugee acceptance in the world even after the current Government increased the annual refugee quota by 500.

It accepts 1500 refugees a year - or about 0.3 refugees per 1000 people. This ranks New Zealand 95th in the world.

Similar-sized countries like Norway and Ireland accept 11.29 and 1.22 refugees per 1000 residents, ranking them 15th and 69th respectively.

National Party foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said it was a "chaotic situation" and not fair to say if anybody should have acted sooner.

"Intelligence clearly was that Kabul would not fall and there would be time for an arrangement with the Taliban.

"It is a horrible situation. I do not think we are able to say anything should have been done sooner, it is just a mess."

On refugees, Brownlee said it would be "some time" before agencies were able to figure out where Afghan people would fall in the international refugee programme.

There were already about 20 million people displaced around the world.

"If you just go to the latest hotspot then you are leaving out others who have been in that situation longer."

Read more here:

Fall of Afghanistan: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says NZ unlikely to rescue 'everyone we want to' - New Zealand Herald

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - Cheryl Simpson was supposed to be celebrating her 60th birthday over lunch with friends but instead found herself confined to her Auckland home.

The discovery of a single local COVID-19 case in New Zealand was enough for the government to put the entire country into strict lockdown this past week. While others might see that as draconian, New Zealanders generally support such measures because they worked so well in the past.

"I'm happy to go into lockdown, even though I don't like it," said Simpson, owner of a day care center for dogs that is now closed because of the precautions. She said she wants the country to crush the latest outbreak: "I'd like to knock the bloody thing on the head."

Elsewhere around the Pacific, though, Japan is resisting such measures in the face of a record-breaking surge, instead emphasizing its accelerating vaccine program. And Australia has fallen somewhere in the middle.

All three countries got through the first year of the pandemic in relatively good shape but are now taking diverging paths in dealing with outbreaks of the delta variant, the highly contagious form that has contributed to a growing sense that the coronavirus cannot be stamped out, just managed.

Professor Michael Baker, an epidemiologist at New Zealand's University of Otago, said countries around the world are struggling to adapt to the latest threat: "With the delta variant, the old rules just don't work."

The differing emphasis on lockdowns versus vaccines and how effective such strategies prove to be in beating back the delta variant could have far-reaching consequences for the three countries' economies and the health of their citizens.

Japan has never imposed lockdowns against the coronavirus. The public is wary of government overreach after the country's fascist period before and during World War II, and Japan's postwar constitution lays out strict protections for civil liberties.

Before the delta variant, the country managed to keep a lid on coronavirus outbreaks in part because many people in Japan were already used to wearing surgical masks for protection from spring allergies or when they caught colds.

Now, almost everyone on public transportation wears a mask during commuting hours. But late at night, people tend to uncover in restaurants and bars, which has allowed the variant to spread. Hosting the Tokyo Olympic Games didn't help either.

While strict protocols kept infections inside the games to a minimum, experts such as Dr. Shigeru Omi, a key medical adviser to the government, say the Olympics created a festive air that led people in Japan to lower their guard.

New cases in Japan have this month leaped to 25,000 each day, more than triple the highest previous peak. Omi considers that a disaster.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday expanded and extended a state of emergency covering Tokyo and other areas until at least mid-September, though most of the restrictions aren't legally enforceable.

Many governors are urging the prime minister to consider much tougher restrictions. But Suga said lockdowns have been flouted around the world, and vaccines are "the way to go."

Daily vaccinations in Japan increased tenfold from May to June as thousands of worksites and colleges began offering shots, but a slow start has left the nation playing catch-up. Only about 40% of people are fully vaccinated.

In Australia, a delta outbreak hit Sydney in June, after an unvaccinated limousine driver became infected while transporting a U.S. cargo air crew from the Sydney Airport. State authorities hesitated for 10 days before imposing lockdown measures across Sydney that have now dragged on for two months.

Early in the pandemic, Australia's federal government imposed just one nationwide lockdown. Now, amid the delta outbreak, it is pursuing a strategy it calls aggressive suppression including strict controls on Australians leaving the country and foreigners entering but is essentially letting state leaders call the shots.

New infections in Sydney have climbed from just a few each week before the latest outbreak to more than 800 a day.

"It's not possible to eliminate it completely. We have to learn to live with it," Gladys Berejiklian, premier of Sydney's New South Wales state, said in what many interpreted as a significant retreat from the determination state leaders have previously shown to crush outbreaks entirely.

"That is why we have a dual strategy in New South Wales," Berejiklian said. "Get those case numbers down, vaccination rates up. We have to achieve bothin order forus to live freely into the future."

The outbreak in Sydney has spilled over into the capital, Canberra, which has also gone into lockdown. Government worker Matina Carbone wore a mask while shopping on Friday.

"I don't know that anyone's ever going to really beat delta," she said. "I think we just have to try and increase our rates of vaccinations and slowly open things up when we think it's safe to do so."

But Australia lags far behind even Japan in getting people inoculated, with just 23% of people fully vaccinated.

Last year, soon after the pandemic first hit, neighboring New Zealand imposed a strict, nationwide lockdown and closed its border to non-residents. That wiped out the virus completely. The country of 5 millionhasbeen able to vanquish each outbreak since, recording just 26 virus deaths.

It went six months without a single locally spread case, allowing people to go about their daily lives much as they had before the pandemic.

But this month, the Sydney outbreak spread to New Zealand, carried by a returning traveler.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promptly imposed the strictest form of lockdown.

By Sunday, the number of locally spread cases in New Zealand had grown to 72, and the virus had reached the capital, Wellington. Officials raced to track 10,000 more people who might have been exposed.

Ardern has been steadfast.

"We have been here before. We know the elimination strategy works. Cases rise, and then they fall, until we have none," she said. "It's tried and true. We just need to stick it out."

Baker, the epidemiologist, said he believes it is still possible for New Zealand to wipe out the virus again by pursuing the "burning ember" approach of taking drastic measures to stamp out the first sign of an outbreak.

That remains to be seen.

New Zealand doesn't have much of a Plan B. A recent report by expert advisers to the government noted the nation has comparatively few intensive care hospital beds and said an outbreak could quickly overwhelm the health system.

And New Zealand has been the slowest developed nation to put shots in arms, with just 20% of people fully vaccinated.

Link:

Lockdowns or Vaccines? 3 Pacific Nations Try Diverging Paths - VOA Asia

news, world

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern concedes her government will fail to airlift all its citizens from Afghanistan prior to a US-imposed deadline on military-assisted departures from the crisis country. Like Australia, New Zealand is one of many countries scrambling to support departures from the south Asian nation which has fallen under Taliban control. The United States has signalled it will not provide support for the airlift beyond August 31, turning the mission into a race against time. "The window is very short. The number of people seeking to leave is enormous," Ms Ardern said on Thursday. "No one has gone in with the intention of leaving anyone behind but the reality of the situation has been extraordinarily difficult." New Zealand is placing the greatest urgency on its citizens and permanent residents, followed by Afghans who assisted their defence forces and agencies during the two-decade-long conflict. On Thursday, NZ's foreign affairs ministry said applications from Afghans to resettle in New Zealand were no longer being accepted. That leaves the question of Afghans fearing persecution under the islamist Taliban regime. Oxfam Aotearoa, Amnesty New Zealand and other like-minded organisations are supporting a push for a greater refugee intake from Afghanistan, tabling a 20,000-strong petition to the parliament on Thursday. "There's a moral duty to help those who have helped the work of the New Zealand government, NGOs and others," Oxfam Aotearoa executive director Rachael Le Mesuirer told AAP. "They've taken huge risks with their safety. "New Zealand lags behind the rest of the world for refugee intake ... we take half as many refugees as Australia per capita." Ms Ardern said a plan would be drawn up on how to assist those in need who remain in Afghanistan beyond this month. "Cabinet intends - once we have a final consolidation of those that we've been able to evacuate - to then work through a plan for those who still remain," she said. That group will include not just citizens, permanent residents and wartime allies, but refugees and humanitarian immigrants. Ms Ardern suggested it would be within the country's regular refugee intake. "There is work to be done across the international community to see that there is going to be that (humanitarian) support," she said. "We'll have a particular eye on those who, because of their human rights work or others, we would have concern about." Australian Associated Press

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern concedes her government will fail to airlift all its citizens from Afghanistan prior to a US-imposed deadline on military-assisted departures from the crisis country.

Like Australia, New Zealand is one of many countries scrambling to support departures from the south Asian nation which has fallen under Taliban control.

The United States has signalled it will not provide support for the airlift beyond August 31, turning the mission into a race against time.

"The window is very short. The number of people seeking to leave is enormous," Ms Ardern said on Thursday.

"No one has gone in with the intention of leaving anyone behind but the reality of the situation has been extraordinarily difficult."

New Zealand is placing the greatest urgency on its citizens and permanent residents, followed by Afghans who assisted their defence forces and agencies during the two-decade-long conflict.

On Thursday, NZ's foreign affairs ministry said applications from Afghans to resettle in New Zealand were no longer being accepted.

That leaves the question of Afghans fearing persecution under the islamist Taliban regime.

Oxfam Aotearoa, Amnesty New Zealand and other like-minded organisations are supporting a push for a greater refugee intake from Afghanistan, tabling a 20,000-strong petition to the parliament on Thursday.

"There's a moral duty to help those who have helped the work of the New Zealand government, NGOs and others," Oxfam Aotearoa executive director Rachael Le Mesuirer told AAP.

"They've taken huge risks with their safety.

"New Zealand lags behind the rest of the world for refugee intake ... we take half as many refugees as Australia per capita."

Ms Ardern said a plan would be drawn up on how to assist those in need who remain in Afghanistan beyond this month.

"Cabinet intends - once we have a final consolidation of those that we've been able to evacuate - to then work through a plan for those who still remain," she said.

That group will include not just citizens, permanent residents and wartime allies, but refugees and humanitarian immigrants.

Ms Ardern suggested it would be within the country's regular refugee intake.

"There is work to be done across the international community to see that there is going to be that (humanitarian) support," she said.

"We'll have a particular eye on those who, because of their human rights work or others, we would have concern about."

Australian Associated Press

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Afghan refugees in our thinking: Ardern - The Northern Daily Leader

This year may well turn out to have been a the golden year for New Zealand, with more Covid-19 incursions and lockdowns inevitable once the border is reopened, a top Government advisor has warned.

The dire prediction came from Professor Sir David Skegg, who heads the Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group and has counselled the Government on how to re-open after the pandemic.

When we reopen the border things are going to get tough. This is the golden year. In the last six months, we are the only country on earth just living a normal life, he said at a health committee meeting on Thursday, the last of three meetings set up after Parliament was suspended amid the current Delta outbreak.

Skegg said he was less optimistic contact tracers would be able to get ahead of a new outbreak of the fast-spreading virus next year without lockdowns.

When we start opening the borders we are going to get outbreaks of Covid-19 and they are going to be difficult to control, he said. This virus is not going away and unfortunately we are going to be in a war with this virus for years.

READ MORE:* Covid-19: Baby aged under 1 infected with virus in Auckland community outbreak* Covid-19 NZ: How viable is New Zealands coronavirus elimination plan in the time of Delta?* Covid-19: 100pc of cases at the border in last three weeks were Delta variant

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Professor Sir David Skegg speaking at the Reconnecting New Zealanders to the World forum weeks before the Delta outbreak.

Skegg also renewed his calls to strengthen public health units and the contact tracing workforce. This was one of his key recommendations to the Government earlier this month when he presented his report on how border restrictions can be eased once everyone is vaccinated.

Since then, an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant has mushroomed to include more than 24,000 contacts, more than 400 locations of interest and 277 infections. New evidence has shown this variant is much more infectious than previous strains of Covid-19, with a case infecting another person two days earlier than the original virus.

The people dealing with this outbreak much be working night and day, its turning out to be a major challenge, he said.

The period of time from when someone gets exposed to an infected person and then becomes infectious themselves is on average two days shorter. It does make us less optimistic that next year we will be able to continue elimination of outbreaks by testing and contact tracing alone.

Most Kiwis have been living a relatively normal life over the past six months, while the economy has also done well. But that luck wasnt going to last, Skegg said.

We have gone for just under six months without a single outbreak. I hope this one is stamped out quite quickly [but] only time will tell.

Meanwhile, New Zealands stretched health system was not equipped to deal with an outbreak

When one starts to look at things like intensive care beds, we are way below the average for the OECD, he told the committee, referring to the global grouping of developed nations. That is one of many incentives to try and keep Covid-19 as low as possible.

At her 1pm briefing on Thursday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that nearly 1400 contact tracers would be in call centres by the end of the day.

The rest is here:

Expert: 2021 may prove a 'golden year' with more outbreaks, lockdowns expected next year - Stuff.co.nz