Some of the most important elements of New Zealand’s Covid-19 response were slowly - and poorly - executed, writes Dr Selva Selvarajah.
The September-11 attack transformed our world irreversibly and negatively. Today we are witnessing the destructive powers of a fugitive coronavirus staging an unprecedented and traumatic global event. We have wrestled with the virus and flattened the curve and have been the envy of other nations still fighting the virus. Could we have done better?
As a Kiwi calling this magical Aotearoa my home for 36 years and as a researcher habitually analysing complex data and information, I dedicate this objective assessment by leaving my Kiwi pride aside.
Let us assess our responses to this pandemic.
A public health emergency was declared by the World Health Organisation on January 31. We shut foreign travellers from China on February 3 and soon evacuated and quarantined travellers from Wuhan at Whangaparaoa which was a commendable start.
Our first case arrival was on February 28. With our relaxed border control and self-isolation minus the gold standard tracing and the ‘stamp it out’ system, the virus began to spread rapidly. Alert Level 2 was hastily launched on March 21 followed by Level 3 on March 23 and then the panic - March 25 lockdown - with 205 cases caused mainly by the overseas travels.
As Professor Gorman, Auckland University articulated, we squandered our geographic advantage in keeping the virus out. We failed to engage our global leadership and expertise in biosecurity in containing this deadly virus. We not only consciously permitted the new virus entry into Aotearoa that demands the most stringent processes to import new organisms but allowed the spread nonchalantly for three full weeks.
Amidst the lockdown and on April 9 we began the ‘approved managed isolation’ for our incoming Kiwis, by which time we had 1239 cases and the US and UK sustained 14,700 and 7097 deaths, respectively. By May 3, we had 1487 cases and 20 deaths, of which 14 were from two rest-homes.
Clearly, our measures were not designed to achieve elimination. Successful containment is another story. If we had introduced the ‘stamp it out’ by early March, we would have avoided all main clusters and the human casualties and exited the lockdown by mid-April despite our clumsy ‘keep it out’ process. The costly lessons learnt were, be ready with gold standard measures, execute the ‘keep it out’ step effectively before the virus arrival and if failing, trigger the ‘stamp it out’ step early.
Effective and swift measures would have stopped or reduced the virus spread and had lesser socio-economic impacts. From the outset, we had no plans to avoid substantial economic and social stress. Our ‘health only’ approach appears hypocritical when we tragically lose 33,000 of our Kiwis to cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory and diabetes diseases and 550 to suicide annually. We were wary of Maori and Pacific people being most vulnerable to Covid-19.
Much of the above is preventable. We were not hesitant in preventing Covid-19 related deaths at an unprecedented socio-economic cost. Why did not we embrace the same principle in avoiding non-virus-related deaths? The lesson learnt is our government urgently addressing chronic and historical underfunding of our health system and renewing and refreshing the system efficiency and effectiveness in preventing regular deaths and improving our quality of life.
Our alert system was slow and poorly executed. According to our alert system, the Level 3 definition is ‘high risk, the disease is not contained’, with the risk assessment of “community transmission with new clusters”, whilst the actual situation is “the disease is contained, but the risk of community transmission remains”, which is Level 2 description.
In short, technically we are in Level 2, yet we are today in Level 3 without any scientific reasoning.
We borrowed a week from Level 3 to bring our tracing system to gold standard before leaving Level 4. Waiting until May 11 to exit Level 3 is needless and costly. If we execute our system inconsistently, the community trust and compliance with any future system will be undermined.
Adaptive management is essential but with compelling reasons. The lesson learnt is, establish and follow systems with sharp, timely and sensible adaptive management. In other words, navigating within our alert system to exit it successfully warrants not management by fear, rather risk focused approach. The same applies to allowing halted activities earlier and managing future activities until the vaccines.
During the crisis, our primary industries have been cushioning the economic losses and feeding us quietly. There have been calls to change our reliance on traditional industries. Strategically and for the time being, let us not bite the only hand that is feeding us. In this unprecedented time, let us foster our ongoing trade relationships with the utmost diplomacy, generate novel practical ideas and projects gradually, without throwing the baby out with bath water. This is a wrong time for risky manoeuvres.
Whilst critical in these times, constantly throwing billions to keep the economy afloat does not require brain power. Shovel-ready projects are timely but hopefully not at the cost of environmental harm. Regular relaxing of restrictions will boost domestic activities and the economy. The most effective stimulus can be gained by bringing back our local and international tourism and the foreign students as fast as we can with effective bubble arrangements and risk management system.
As a community we are now convinced, we need to take greater responsibility in avoiding panic buys, any disease transmissions in the future by sustained hygienic measures and improving our own health with healthy habits. More virus outbreaks, pandemics and superbugs are inevitable. Like the twin-tower attack this coronavirus has changed the world irreversibly, but unlike the twin-tower incident, this virus has numerous positive effects.
Let us learn to live with the virus. We are all in this forever.
- Dr Selvarajah is Founder of Enviroknowledge Ltd. which trains environmental professionals.
