New Zealand divided over how to handle 20,000 daily Covid cases after years of barely any – iNews

For much of the past two years, New Zealand has weathered the pandemic by stopping Covid-19 at its borders, which closed to almost everyone but New Zealand citizens and permanent residents on 19 March 2020.

Until recently anyone entering the country went into managed hotel isolation. With a million New Zealanders living overseas, and not enough capacity within the hotel quarantine system to accommodate everyone who wanted or needed a space, our border controls have caused misery for many people. The absence of tourists, backpackers and foreign students has been difficult for many industries. With family in the UK and Australia, Ive found it tough.

But controlling the entry of the virus into the country has been key to our success. It enabled us to embrace a go hard and early elimination strategy, stamping out any cases that leaked through the border.

Thats meant that life inside most of New Zealand has been pretty normal. Its been surreal and upsetting watching wave after wave of deaths overseas while our kids were at school, and we were safely going to restaurants and holding sporting events and concerts. And I mean safe even for the most vulnerable who in countries like the UK have had to isolate.

Weve had no need for refrigerated morgues outside hospitals. People having babies, heart attacks or strokes have been able to safely access medical care. In fact, while countries like the UK had two years of excess deaths, in 2020 we had the opposite fewer people died than expected.

The elimination strategy has been incredibly popular within New Zealand. Most people have backed the governments efforts to keep Covid-19 out, despite smear attacks on experts like me and almost daily assaults from opinionated pundits.

We saved thousands of lives and bought time for safe and effective vaccines to be developed and rolled out. Aiming for elimination also bought time for the medical profession globally to better understand how to treat Covid-19 patients and for the development of safe and effective antiviral treatments, though these arent available in New Zealand yet.

Our efforts helped the world understand more about how the virus spreads. Our ability to investigate and genome sequence every case showed how the virus transmitted on international and domestic flights and even through the act of briefly opening hotel room doors that were more than two metres apart.

Our elimination strategy ended when Delta made it through our border controls in August last year. Until then wed had fewer than 1,000 confirmed community cases and just 26 deaths. We switched to trying to minimise the spread of Covid-19 using vaccine and mask mandates and vaccine passes.

Again, we were successful, and by early December, thanks to our high vaccination rates, we were looking forward to a summer of festivities and festivals, at least for the vaccinated. Our Delta outbreak had peaked at about 200 confirmed cases a day, massive by New Zealand standards. Sadly, another 25 people had died.

But by then Omicron had evolved. Soon, managed isolation hotels were straining under the number of cases arriving daily. The government ditched its famous go hard and early four-level alert system for the so-called traffic light system, swapping lockdowns for masks and vaccines. We knew it was only a matter of time before Omicron entered New Zealand. And it did, both the BA.1 and BA.2 versions. Again, border controls bought us time to encourage more people to get vaccinated and boosted and to start vaccinating five- to 11-year-olds.

Omicrons entry coincided with schools and universities going back after the Christmas break, and cases started to skyrocket. It didnt take long for them to completely overwhelm our PCR testing and contact tracing systems. Now were using rapid antigen tests and are reliant on people reporting their results to count cases.

By international standards, mask-wearing is high, but most people dont have access to high-quality ones. Weve gone from a country where most people didnt know anyone with Covid-19 to everyone knowing someone. Were at about 20,000 confirmed cases a day. The real number is likely to be much higher. Ive been surprised how quickly people have adapted to the increase. Relatively speaking, death rates are still low, but its early days.

New Zealand is trying to balance limiting the spread of the virus so that our healthcare system still functions, with having enough people working so that transport chains and critical infrastructure dont collapse under the strain of people needing to isolate. Weve joined the rest of the world

Weve even had our own version of the Canadian truckers protest outside parliament. Our 23-day, super-spreader freedom camp ended with protesters who believe Covid-19 symptoms are a result of government radiation ray weapons setting fire to tents and the childrens playground outside parliament.

Our borders are beginning to open, and like the rest of the world, New Zealand is now leaning on individual choice rather than collective action. While some remain cautious and in self-imposed forms of lockdown, others are living as though Covid-19 isnt in the community through choice or necessity. That means the burden is not falling equitably.

New Zealands colonial past and systemic racism that continues to this day means the burden is disproportionately felt by Mori and Pacific Islander communities. Its a pattern weve seen repeated around the world, with the poor, immunocompromised, and ethnic minorities hardest hit. Its a situation we should find utterly repugnant. It worries me how much the world is ignoring potential long-term impacts of even mild infection on organs including the brain, heart and testicles.

Moving forward, New Zealand desperately needs to set up the kinds of studies the UK has excelled at but is now abandoning like REACT-1, ZOE, and the ONS prevalence survey, so we can keep track of how Covid is playing out nationwide. Weve established a good sewage surveillance system but its not enough, especially with winter on its way here.

The irony is, New Zealands early response to the pandemic showed that if the world had focused on collective rather than individual action, and protecting health before the economy, we may have prevented Covid-19 following diseases like HIV in becoming endemic. Just because it is becoming endemic doesnt mean we should do nothing. At the very least, we need global cooperation to monitor for the emergence of new variants and counter misinformation and disinformation that persuades people and governments to reject vital public health measures. We also need action to ensure equitable access to effective antivirals and vaccines.

In the meantime, Ill keep wearing a mask, get vaccinated again if thats needed, and play my part to protect myself and my community from this awful disease.

Dr SiouxsieWilesMNZM is a microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Auckland and was 2021s New Zealander of the Year

See original here:

New Zealand divided over how to handle 20,000 daily Covid cases after years of barely any - iNews