What NZ Covid Elimination really achieved

Last year October (2020) I remember having a discussion with work colleagues about how surreal it was that the rest of the world was battling Covid and here in NZ we were living in freedom. It seemed like we were on a different planet. And I think we were.

Credit does deserve to be given to the government of the day for managing Covid in early 2020 and achieving elimination. Everyone will agree that elimination was necessary so that as a country we could prepare ourselves for the pandemic.

But that’s where elimination should have ended.

It was a strategy that gave us time and space to think long-term and be prepared for the inevitable – that Covid was here to stay. It gave us time to have a proper roadmap. To look at what was happening in other countries and learn from their mistakes. Use these learnings and prepare the whole nation for vaccinations and learning to live with Covid.

Pull resources together and prepare for more ICU beds and specially trained medical personnel. Take Covid plus variants head-on. Something the rest of the world was not able to do. And achieve gold standard this way.

Personally, after the second lockdown in 2020, my view quickly turned to that – Covid was not going to get eliminated in the world, let alone in NZ. And to continue burying our heads in the sand and living in our freedoms were, while enjoyable, very short-term outlooks.

Covid was always lurking around the corner.

What was required back in October 2020 was not a focus on how well we have done with managing Covid but a focus on how well we can do with Covid in the future. We all however tend to live in the present.

While we were busy with ourselves, the rest of the world was getting on with Covid. They dealt with deaths, they dealt with overwhelmed hospital systems. Even dealt with being called morons by us. But, well, here we are. We wasted away precious time.

Some will say that we were ready for long-term Covid. I argue not. Elimination created a false sense of security, for which we are now paying the price. Here’s why.

Complacent

According to information released by the government, our nation’s leaders started preparing for the Delta outbreak in late July 2021. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/documents-reveal-real-lack-of-preparedness-for-delta

Delta was creating chaos around the world, and so close to home – Fiji, April 2020. This was when we had also bubbled with Australia, where Delta had already arrived. Elimination taught us all – leaders and followers- to become complacent.

On one busy Saturday afternoon, the ferry captain announced that masks were mandatory for all passengers, but over 50% were onboard without a mask. When my husband kicked up a fuss with the ferry staff, he was told that the transport operators were not allowed to refuse mask-less passengers onboard. And it seemed like very little people cared that they had no masks on. Complacent? Or simply did not care.

This was the reality for most Kiwis. Why contact trace, why wear masks, when we have no Covid to deal with?

Reactive

Now, with Auckland still in lockdown, it seems that the government is still operating in a reactionary mode. Please don’t take my word for this though. I quote from a government released document, which was a review of government’s Covid response in 2020 –https://covid19.govt.nz/assets/resources/22-Mar-21-Proactive-Release/Second-rapid-review-of-the-COVID-19-all-of-goverment-response.pdf

“The reactive space in which the response has so far existed has meant that these governance structures have remained at the “tactical” or “issues-management” level, rather than being able to set strategic or future-focussed agendas for the response.” Page 12

“Interviewees acknowledged, however, that the system has been largely in reactive mode. We heard there is a real desire to shift to a more strategic and longer-term way of thinking and operating; to get ahead of issues rather than constantly reacting to events as they emerge…Across our interviews, there was an emerging consensus that COVID-19 will be the dominant challenge facing New Zealand (and the world) for at least the next 18-24 months.” Page 11

This report is dated October 2020. A year ago. The reviewers clearly stated that Covid was a challenge for the next two years. Yet sadly, we are making up things as we go in this outbreak. Why think of a future with Covid in it, when it has been eliminated?

Vaccination

Some blame Pfizer for delaying the vaccine delivery. I have no facts here. To date, the vaccine procurement process and contract details have not been made public. We have no factual data, either way, to substantiate any claims because sadly, there is no transparency on this issue.

However, a government media release in January 2021 claimed that our vaccination programme will be the “biggest ever” – https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/latest-updates/covid-19-vaccine-slated-for-possible-approval-next-week/ It also stated that “We hope [emphasis added – they did not say plan] to start vaccinating the wider population mid-year.” Delta arrived in August 2021. At that point, or even before that point, there was no “Super Saturday”, no free sausage sizzles, no seats in business class, etc. to get people vaxxed.

We did well with Super Saturday. It was a great idea. But this type of hype to get vaccinated, when we had time on our side, could have started from January 2021? By now, 10 months in the making, we would be at the desired goal of 90% vaxxed. And our much-coveted gold standard.

But, we are again chasing our tails. With Aucklanders paying the brutal price of a complacent, reactive, irresponsible government. The hype started only when Delta arrived. Why? Elimination. Because we had no Covid. There was no rush to vaccinate the masses.

Irresponsible

At a time when the government had a real leadership role to play, it chose the path of self-adulation. It wanted to prove to the rest of the world that they were better than the rest. Elimination and a Covid free NZ were messages the government held on to for 18 months. While other governments were working hard to promote vaccination.

It is irresponsible to expect the nation to change its mind as quickly as the government has (abandoned elimination in a day)? Change does not happen overnight.

I have heard about people in the country who still think they can remain unvaccinated because they have lived without Covid since May 2020. Elimination created this false sense of security.

To date, not one government personnel has admitted that they were lax in preparing for Delta. Not one person has said sorry to Aucklanders, for not moving MIQ facilities out of this city.

Rather, the arrogance carries on. Another milestone for NZ to achieve – be the world leader by being the most vaxxed. What does being a world leader mean to an Aucklander who gets out of level 2.75 into a vague traffic light system?

We are now paying the heavy price for putting all our eggs in the Elimination basket. It worked well, yes, but only for the short term. Even in the face of Delta in August 2021, we brought out our Elimination basket. While the rest of the world was and is looking ahead, to endemicity.

Now would be a good time to prepare the nation for what lies ahead, in the longer term. But, we are messing around with alert levels and traffic light systems. Again, very short-sighted. How very responsible!

Notes:

Please see sources for endemicity and scientific/medical data on living with Covid: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8461290/;

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/what-will-it-be-like-when-covid-19-becomes-endemic/;

https://sgmatters.com/whats-the-journey-towards-endemicity-like-is-the-taskforce-flip-flopping/

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(21)02186-3.pdf

PS: One may say that this virus caught the world by surprise, and our government was dealing with it in a reactionary manner, like the rest of the world. I beg to differ on the simple point that, yes, we had no blueprint, but we had the benefit of time, and our geographic isolation.

We were living in freedoms that were not available for the rest of the world for most of last year and early 2021. During this time, we could have used the available science, data from the rest of the world, their experiences, etc. to prepare for the inevitable. I do agree that last year we did well. But we lost focus. And sadly, we are none the wiser still.

One might also argue that all this commentary is beneficial in hindsight. I argue that last year, in August 2020, I was one of the few people who was calling Elimination out, who was calling out the lack of long-term thinking. And I am an ordinary individual. I am not a civil servant. If I have the capability to think ahead, why are our government ministers exempt from this ability? Do we not vote them into power to do such thinking for us?

They have the resources to do long-term forecasts, to get the best in the country to do this type of work for them, they have the resources to tap into WHO and other scientific data, to talk to other world leaders and analyse what has worked and what has not over the last 18 months. The fact that they did not make use of these resources does not make me a bad person for calling it out.