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New Zealand was lucky that Ruby Princess only temporarily stopped here, says Australian medical director Professor Brendan Murphy.

The cruise ship stopped at Christchurch, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay before returning to Sydney on March 19.

The ship is at the center of multiple Covid-19 deaths through the Tasman.

Fifteen passengers on the Carnival cruise ship had died and more than 650 people had been infected. They include passengers and other contact points.

The cruise went to New Zealand for a two-week cruise across the country.
The ruby ​​princess docked at Napier Harbor on March 15, her last port of call in New Zealand before returning to Sydney.

Their coupling led to a group of Covid-19 cases at Hawke’s Bay, including six at Gladys Mary Care Home in Napier.

Murphy told the Epidemic Response Committee today that Australia had far more cases than New Zealand, although two-thirds of the cases in Australia were from returning travelers and from cruise ships.

There were about 30 to 40 new cases every day. All returning travelers were quarantined for the past two weeks, but a significant number of new cases continued to arrive from foreign arrivals.

Murphy said any clamor to relax the restrictions was still “premature” and that there was no right answer to get out of the pandemic without a vaccine.

Australia, like New Zealand, had rejected the idea of ​​a controlled outbreak, and Murphy said that Australia’s goal was aggressive repression and doubted that “elimination” could be achieved in the long term.

Australia’s “social distancing” had been “largely” similar to New Zealand’s approach.

National leader Simon Bridges, who chairs the committee, said he had been told he needed a haircut and could not do it in New Zealand, but hairdressers in Australia were allowed to continue operating.

Murphy said that people were told to work from home, but that if they couldn’t, they were allowed to go to work if they could remain physically distant. But gyms and theaters and beauty therapists were closed, and while there was a lot of debate about hairdressers, they were allowed to continue as the restrictions could be in place for months.

Retail chains were allowed to remain open, but many chose to close, Murphy said.

Murphy said shipping malls were 80 percent empty than before the restrictions, but that construction and manufacturing were moving forward. The last sector had found to maintain physical distance than the first.

Murphy said the last thing Australia wanted was a relaxation of the restrictions that would lead to a bigger outbreak. Using apps to improve contact tracking was necessary before any relaxation, and there should also be a good supply chain of test kits, as well as sentinel testing to verify community transmission, which was still a few weeks away.

However, he said that most of the school outbreaks had been from adult to adult, and that schools were running again and were on the agenda.

Murphy said some states with larger outbreaks were considering larger business closings, but Australia opted for a two-person meeting restriction.

But if we were looking for a total phase-out strategy, that’s the situation where it could be a little bit more difficult for a longer time, that’s a debate we have to have, but right now there is no pressure. “

Australia would love to do the elimination too, he said, but he wasn’t sure how realistic that was.

When asked about the possibility of opening borders between New Zealand and Australia in light of different approaches, Murphy said there was not much difference in strategy with New Zealand, and time will tell if any of the countries can completely eliminate the broadcast.

Murphy said the public health recommendations were that physical distancing could be in place for several months, which is why major gatherings, pubs and clubs, cinemas and gyms were closed. Construction, manufacturing and retail would have continued if the outbreaks had been worse.

“The feeling in the National Cabinet was that we would like to keep some of those core activities going, and clearly if things got worse or worse, we would go harder.”

It would not be determined whether New Zealand should allow more construction, manufacturing and retailing, saying it depended on New Zealand circumstances and that it was a decision by the New Zealand Government.

“We will go harder than NZ”

Murphy said that until a vaccine was ready, the level of surveillance should “be huge” and it was always possible for more outbreaks to occur. An “illegal medical workers dinner” was responsible for a recent outbreak in Australia, he added.

“It’s a long way, with measures in place that are quite significant that you can tweak a little from time to time, but nothing will really beat having a really broad public health response. Evidence that if you take too long, the UK has In fact, you can see the carnage you suffer along the way. As soon as we saw a significant community broadcast, we felt we had to go tough. Our “tough” is very different from someone else’s “tough”, but it is very disruptive. We may not have gone as hard as New Zealand, but we will go harder if necessary. “

He said that surveillance tests, which gather information to see where coronavirus is present in the population or among certain demographic characteristics, and the use of smartphone technology and physical distancing will continue to be the “new normal,” and festivals. they will probably continue to be banned for the foreseeable future.

He said the TraceTogether app, which is used in Singapore and is being considered by New Zealand to improve contact tracking, was also on Australia’s radar.

Australia had less stringent measures than New Zealand, and the Australian government had not wanted to close schools, but parents intervened and stopped sending children to schools.

Globally, there are or have been 1.88 million cases of Covid-19, with more than 117,000 deaths.

There are 1,349 cases in New Zealand, with five deaths, and the number of new cases has decreased for eight days; 62,827 tests have been performed, or 12.9 tests per 1,000 people.

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Australia

As of this morning, there are 6,359 confirmed cases in Australia, where the death toll is 61 and more than 362,000 tests have been performed, or 14.5 per 1,000 people.

The number of new cases is shrinking but has not yet peaked, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that the fight against Covid-19 would last at least another six months.

Throughout March, the Morrison government opposed closing schools, but the state of Victoria brought school vacations ahead, while other states and territories introduced studentless days to prepare for online learning.

The Australian government wants schools to remain open, but will review the issue on Thursday.

Singapore

Singapore has been praised for its ability to control new coronavirus infections without imposing significant social and economic restrictions, but a recent increase in cases has seen an imposed blockade.

It has 2918 cases and nine deaths.

On March 25, approximately 6.8 people per 1,000 were being evaluated.

Singapore initially allowed the schools to remain open, but decided to close them all on April 8.

Similarly, some companies were allowed to remain open, but only nonessential companies can still operate under the new lock.

A large number of the new cases are related to outbreaks in the dormitories of migrant workers, many of which have been quarantined.

Singapore has been using a bluetooth app to improve contact tracking, and New Zealand is in an active conversation about using the same app in New Zealand.

But only one in five people in Singapore has signed up to use it so far, and experts have estimated that around three-quarters of the population must sign up for it to be useful.

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