The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world.
And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.
What a tough situation there.
It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.
I think you need to check the stats again, NZ is finding about 20 covid cases per day. They have had fewer than 4,000 cases of covid since March 2020. It’s one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and appear on track to eliminate the delta variant from their country for now. (I suspect it’s only a matter of time till it escapes their quarantine system though, but they’re successfully buying time to finish a vaccination campaign.)
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
People enter lockdown, realise they are a case and are moved to quarantine almost immediately. Unfortunately those few days between infection and quarantine are enough now to spread Delta.
So doesn't look like anything has changed.
I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away.
The spread stopped, though we detected cases for the next two weeks (as normal for Covid) which had been infected pre-lockdown.
Then we spent a whole year with no restrictions, no masks, normal gatherings, no covid. There were a couple of minor lockdowns lasting a few weeks in there from small border breaches.
This time, we did the same thing. Same lockdown, same cases afterwards. The only difference is that Delta spreads now within families post lockdown, otherwise everything is the same.
In a month from now, we'll be back to open with no restrictions or deaths.
Our total deaths so far since Covid began in 2019? 27.
We currently have 4 people in critical condition at hospital.
How do the totals look where you live?
I’m not from NZ. I’m from USA, a country that took the opposite approach and allowed the virus to spread before vaccines were available. Over 600,000 of my fellow citizens died as a result. The NZ approach may not have been effective in the USA for various reasons, but we can’t dispute it was very effective in NZ at preventing the death of their citizens.
Now, even if they reopen to the world without any controls and allow the virus to become endemic in a few months, they’ll have saved many of their citizens’ lives. Vaccination reduces the death rate from Covid-19 by around 10-20x so 90% or 95% of Covid-19 deaths are preventable if you vaccinate before letting the virus become endemic.
This is because they are an island, and they eliminated Covid once and are aiming to do so again.
I feel like "only NZ could have done this, since they are an island" is a cop-out.
Any nation could adopt other pillars of our system also, such as free testing, free healthcare, free vaccinations. Or Contact tracing, quarantine of infected people. Clear scientific communication by those in charge.
It's not magic, it has been well documented what to do in pandemic situations for 20 years. Only the specific tools (the test, the vaccine itself) are specific to Covid-19.
The only way to eliminate it to a basic endemic state, is via the immune system.
And the fact that vaccines just reduce the symptoms and don't stop it's spread....means it's never going away.
Eliminate revolves around the strategy of stopping viral spread in a given population until there are no new cases. That population in this case is NZ, not the world.
For more info on "Keep it out, Prepare for it, Stamp it out," read https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
Will never happen happen except temporarily. That's just fundamental epidemiology.
It's a pity that more nations aren't doing so.
Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19.
Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths.
Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...
Our lockdowns might be the most restrictive, but that makes them the most effective. So I'm not too worried about that. I'd prefer a short sharp lockdown and then total freedom (within the borders) over the lingering fear that appears to be happening overseas.
Personally I'm happy to be winning another few months or a year free of Delta by staying at home for a while. If there was no official lockdown I would still want to stay at home.
You are never past the point of lockdowns stopping it. It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns and all the people who are currently infected without knowing it have progressed to either known or recovered.
Then you just do some testing and contact tracing (while remaining in lockdown) to mop up the rest of your infected population.
This applies to any infected population. Note that most lockdowns define "essential" too widely - beyond just supermarkets, doctors & hospitals.
The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.
A further 14 days and any regions with no cases are safe to exit lockdown, as long as you have good border controls.
But I imagine that if your hospitals are flooded with patients and Covid is rocking your area, you need those initial 14 days just to reduce the caseload to the point where you can test and contact trace again. That's all it takes to get back from "impossible to eliminate" to "we just need to stamp this out now"
Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants.
The protection seems to be waning already in Israel.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
> you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.
I don't think so?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...
I think part of our successful economic recovery is because it wasn't only OPEN but SAFE. In the US and UK there are families living in fear of infection, leading to less consumer behavior.
Regarding the article, I think many people wanted to know that there was an "end" in sight to COVID. This narrative was attached to Vaccines as "the end" by much of the press that I watch in the states.
Here in NZ the press is putting pressure on the Govt. to ease lock-down restrictions as the vaccination rate goes up. But we're still reluctant to allow covid in "and just live with it" even as levels of vaccination rise.
I think the only realistic "end" is when the multiplicative effect of masks, caution (social distancing for eg) and the vaccine reduces R below 1 in each individual country long enough to achieve elimination over time.
It would be a pity if in some communities Covid is never eliminated.