[ad_1]
Jacinda Ardern won the New Zealand election with a large majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist urges the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinize her government and officials’ response to the coronavirus, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents ahead of Saturday’s vote.
“New Zealand has shown that it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see that we have these blind spots and we don’t need to have blind spots,” said Nick Wilson, epidemiologist at the University of Otago. “This is such a relentless disease and very few countries are doing it well, so we must improve our performance substantially.”
The Ardern government has been praised internationally for its response to the pandemic, in which one of the world’s tightest closures in March and April resulted in a death toll of 25 and fewer than 2,000 confirmed cases across the nation of 5 million. .
With 58 active cases of Covid-19, only three of them in the community and the rest in border quarantine facilities, New Zealanders have mostly returned to life normally. People have largely abandoned masks in public, and use of the government’s contact tracing app has dropped to a trickle with just over 620,000 scans of QR codes displayed at businesses reported by health officials Thursday. , compared to 2.5 million in August.
“We need to ask ourselves what is the best way to control an outbreak when it occurs, and it is not through this low-level application that people are just going to give up,” Wilson said. “It just isn’t sustainable.”
Instead of urging New Zealanders to use the app, it was time to examine the “whole system” imposed to contain the virus “now that the elections are over and politicians are less afraid that the decisions they make will trip them up” Wilson said.
The main danger lurks at the borders as New Zealanders return from Covid-19 hotspots around the world. They have to spend two weeks in government-run isolation, but the facilities are urban hotels, where lapses in management procedures could easily cause outbreaks in the community.
The integrity of New Zealand’s border containment strategy was one of the main points of attack by the opposition National Party before the elections, forcing the Ardern government to defend its decisions.
“It is inevitable that when the opposition suggested pre-flight testing of travelers, the government would not want to suddenly adopt it because they seem to be on the defensive,” Wilson said.
He added that when New Zealand First, a minor party that had supported the government during its previous tenure, suggested quarantine facilities specially designed to house returning travelers, it had also failed to gain ground due to the politics at stake.
Wilson supported both proposals, as well as limits on travelers arriving from the most affected countries.
“Now we have to put all that political stance aside and say what is the best solution from a completely scientific risk management perspective,” he said. “We need to consider cost effectiveness and the best use of people’s time and effort.”
He also regretted the visa waivers granted for some essential workers to enter the country, including 235 Russian and Ukrainian fishing crews with 18 diagnosed Covid-19 cases. They all stay in a government-run quarantine hotel in Christchurch.
“Statistically, there will be more outbreaks at the Auckland level if we don’t adjust things,” Wilson said, referring to a case of unknown origin, probably related to the country’s border, that triggered a second Auckland closure in August. “The government must consider whether it is worth the risk of bringing underpaid fishermen and fruit pickers into the country, risking a cost of millions of dollars for future closures.”
Michael Baker, also an epidemiologist at the University of Otago, like Wilson, called for an official investigation to examine New Zealand’s response to Covid-19 to date. Those watching New Zealand’s relative success from abroad might covet the South Pacific nation’s results, but they hadn’t been perfect, the men said.
The couple have long recommended a different contract tracking system: a portable dongle, as used in Singapore; telecommunications data, deployed in Taiwan; or the Apple and Google protocols as used in Europe, all of which require less active participation than the New Zealand app.
“The government just doesn’t want to even start thinking about privacy issues,” Wilson said. “They were very cautious before the elections, but now they have a huge mandate and they have the opportunity to re-evaluate things carefully and not stick rigidly to what they were doing before.”
Andrew Chen, a digital analyst and researcher at the University of Auckland, said that only a small proportion of people are using the government’s coronavirus app.
“My estimate is that there are 250-300,000 people a day using it,” Chen said. “I think we’ve found people who are really taking it seriously and will continue to do so.”
There was “nothing more” the government could do or say to urge more people to use the app, and officials should accelerate plans for something better, Wilson said.
Ardern’s promises to help the country recover from the coronavirus have focused on job creation and training, and New Zealand’s positioning on the world stage. But the government has yet to commit to conducting an official investigation into its response to Covid-19.
“At some point in the future, it will be time for a full review of our response to Covid, but not yet,” Health Minister Chris Hipkins told the Stuff news outlet this week. “We are still in the middle of dealing with the global pandemic and I don’t want anything to distract from that effort.”
