Leaders accepted that the country was ill-prepared, and that the health system could not withstand the coming onslaught. This was the first key step towards New Zealand’s success. New Zealand had no choice but to enter a stringent nationwide lockdown. By 26 March it was clear that the epidemic was on track to overwhelm the health system and cause thousands of deaths. Regional public health units could not possibly track and trace close contacts quickly enough to get in front of rapidly spreading transmission. Unlike Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, New Zealand hadn’t been affected by SARS and MERS and had therefore not learnt the lessons its Asian neighbours had. Two weeks after confirming its first case in late February, and when the WHO finally declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, community transmission was starting to occur across the country and the public heath system began to creak. Simply put, New Zealand was ill-prepared for COVID-19. An indebted and decentralised public health system, led by a wonkish Ministry of Health, had demonstrated its limitations with a lacklustre response to a measles outbreak in 2019. In 2019, New Zealand was ranked 35th in the world for its pandemic preparedness, behind Indonesia and South Africa. How did this ill-prepared Pacific island nation beat the virus? By acting decisively, communicating clearly, being a little lucky, and by taking advantage of a particular strength. New Zealand has (twice) effectively eliminated COVID-19, and is heading into a summer of BBQs, musical festivals, and packed cricket stadiums – in stark contrast to the winter of discontent gripping Europe and the UK. Joe Stockman (LSE), who worked on the country’s COVID-19 response, describes how decisiveness, a successful communications strategy, a committed civil service and a degree of luck enabled it to return quickly to normal life. This allowed the south pacific nation to keep its Covid-19 fatality numbers extremely low, reporting only 53 deaths since the start of the pandemic, which equates to 1.08 deaths per 100,000 people.New Zealand is free of COVID-19. Despite this, New Zealand has continued to keep its borders largely shut and instead of ditching all restrictions the country has switched to a “ traffic light system” which replaced lockdowns with targeted measures like mask mandates, vaccine passes and restrictions on large gatherings. However, the emergence of the more infectious delta and omicron variant on its shores forced the country to switch away from its previous strategy. The country relied on one of the world’s strictest border lockdowns along with quarantine and contact tracing efforts to stomp out all local spread of the virus without needing to rely on protracted lockdowns. Over the last two years, New Zealand had emerged as the poster child of the ‘zero-Covid’ approach, which allowed it to enjoy several month-long streaks without any local Covid-19 cases. Additionally 95% of eligible people have received at least one vaccine dose. That’s the percentage of New Zealand’s eligible population-people over the age of 12-who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to official government data. Ardern’s announcement comes as New Zealand is witnessing an omicron variant-fueled surge in cases, the fear of which had delayed earlier reopening plans.
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