Covid 19 coronavirus: thousands of pages of previously secret Covid 19 documents released

A third of Kiwis felt that the blockade did not go far enough, meaning that more stringent measures could have been implemented below level 4 if necessary.

This was in accordance with the first weekly monitoring report of the blockade that was used to inform the Cabinet of decisions to move between alert levels.

It was one of almost 400 previously secret documents that were made public yesterday afternoon.

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The treasure trove of reports, councils, aid memoirs and cabinet decisions paint a picture of the Government’s Covid-19 response.

The material shows the initial “wait and see” advice from the early days of the epidemic; to the most urgent recommendations aimed at mitigating the health and economic costs of the pandemic.

It also reveals the initial feelings of New Zealanders in the level 4 block.

The April 15 documents show how the All Governments team found that a third of Kiwis believed the blockade could have been more difficult.

And the recently released documents also describe some of the serious risks New Zealanders face as a result of the level 4 blockade.

For example, Justice officials were concerned that children and adolescents were increasingly subject to online predators during confinement, as a result of spending more time online.

Officials were concerned that children were particularly vulnerable to lesser-reported abuse and to witnessing violence in the home, as abusive behaviors increased in isolation.

Another report shows that the government rejected the advice to consider liquor stores an essential service.

Authorities warned that closing liquor stores can cause people to “drink alcohol” beyond their communities to obtain alcohol.

This would affect the government’s ability to contain the transmission, according to advice to the Cabinet on March 24.

But the Cabinet rejected this advice and considered liquor stores to be non-essential and only allowed liquor stores to remain open in the four areas where license trusts have a monopoly.

The documents were broken down into different categories, including alert levels and restrictions, borders, education, health response, housing, income support measures, offshore issues, support for the economy, and wage subsidies and leave plans.

Each category contains dozens of documents, from the beginning of February to the end of April.

They reveal a wealth of new information including:
• The initial wage subsidy did not have 56% of the workforce
• The government rejected the recommendations to make liquor stores “essential”
• Tertiary students dropped out of college and entered unemployment benefit due to higher payments.
• A massive increase in Pornhub traffic the day we entered the close
• The impact on the economy could be similar to the Great Depression with up to 300,000 unemployed.

But the Herald learned that before the documents were released yesterday afternoon, an email was sent to government departments advising them to “dismiss” media inquiries.

“The public has confidence in what has been accomplished and in what the government is doing,” said the email, obtained by the Herald.

“Instead, we can fire [media questions]”

This occurs when the number of new Covid-19 cases in New Zealand remains low.

There were only two new cases yesterday and no further deaths were reported.
In fact, there have been only 13 new cases of Covid-19 in the past seven days.

Public Health Director Caroline McElnay said yesterday that the low case numbers were “a very good sign,” but it would not be inferred whether they were a reflection of how New Zealanders had handled the easier Level 3 restrictions.

On Monday, the Cabinet will decide whether New Zealand is ready to go to alert level 2.

Despite the usual 1 p.m. press conference, much of yesterday’s attention was focused on the hundreds of recently released documents.

One board showed that the government’s ability to contact the trace was questioned from the start in its Covid-19 response.

In a weekly briefing to the ministerial group on April 15, the crisis center said there was an undetected community broadcast about three weeks earlier, but they did not know how widespread it was.

He told the government that there were gaps in the data that made it difficult to prepare the report.

He said a significant number of cases had missing information and others had been under investigation for a long time, which reduced his confidence in the data on community-transmitted cases.

Another document revealed that New Zealand’s contact tracking capacity was approximately 10 active cases at a time when the country already had 13 cases of Covid-19.

And, due to information published in another document, it is now known that a few days after Covid-19 became a notifiable disease on January 31, health officials investigated 16 suspected cases.

• Covid19.govt.nz – The official government Covid-19 advisory website

At the time, there were no confirmed or probable cases in the country, as the disease was limited to China.

In addition to describing high-level health concerns, Covid-19’s economic impact was the subject of many briefings and reports.

When the extent of the economic cost of the virus was unknown, IRD officials rejected an idea to remove the requirement for companies affected by Covid-19 to pay GST.

The Treasury’s advice showed that the government eliminated the need for companies to demonstrate that they had suffered a drop in income to obtain the wage subsidy, despite warnings that this would lead to companies that could survive without taking it anyway. .

Officials advised removing the “30 percent loss of income eligibility test” to ensure wide acceptance, although they acknowledged that this would mean that companies that could afford not to take the subsidy would do so.

Another Treasury document, released to ministers in mid-April, reported that the economic blow to New Zealand could be similar to the Great Depression.

He went on to say that unemployment could peak at 300,000 in the September quarter. There were 111,000 in the December quarter of 2019.

On April 2, Education Minister Chris Hipkins revealed that after the first week of the national shutdown, officials warned that some higher education students were already dropping out of college and entering unemployment benefit due to higher payments. high.

Officials said that due to Covid-19, many students had lost part-time jobs that supplemented their student loans or assignments and were having financial difficulties.

In addition to this, Hipkins pressured his cabinet colleagues for an additional $ 14 million in school emergency payments to thousands of part-time and casual employees, such as relief teachers, who had no closing income.

Additional reports from: Derek Cheng, Hamish Rutherford, Claire Trevett, Amelia Wade, Kirsty Johnston