New Zealand led the world in its response to COVID-19. Is that about to change?
While New Zealand is battling its first-ever Delta outbreak, Jacinda Ardern has announced the easing of pandemic restrictions, raising eyebrows throughout the country.
Daniel Cruden is an MPP candidate at the Max Bell School of Public Policy who is originally from New Zealand. Prior to joining the Max Bell School, he was a policy analyst in the New Zealand government (which included the initial response to COVID-19). He has studied at the University of Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington.
At the start of October New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern made an announcement that’s arguably the most significant in terms of her government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Auckland battles its first-ever Delta outbreak, she has announced an easing of restrictions despite slowly rising case numbers in the largest city. She’s also switched from talking about stamping Covid out altogether to simply focusing on stopping “uncontrolled” transmission, which is a crucial change for a government that had gone further than most with a zero-Covid strategy.
Two months ago in response to a single community case, Ardern sent the entire country into its strictest form of lockdown (when it became clear the initial outbreak was confined to Auckland, the lockdown was later eased for the rest of the country). Such an aggressive response might have appeared like an overreaction to some, but it was a simple extension of the government’s existing ‘elimination strategy’: the idea being that whenever COVID appears in the community, short, sharp lockdowns are used to eliminate chains of transmission. Although the government had always maintained that zero cases were not the goal, the strategy has proven effective at limiting COVID transmissionthroughout the pandemic thus far. Only 28 people have died of COVID since the pandemic began, while most other citizens have had personal freedoms only dreamt of elsewhere. The South Island had its last community case in May 2020 (not a typo – it actually has been nearly a year and a half). The economy has also remained relatively intact.
However, now two months on and despite Auckland still being in lockdown, New Zealand has failed to eliminate Delta. Dozens of cases are being reported each day, and that number is rising. So too are the number of cases that have been infectious in the community, and the number of cases that have not been linked to other cases – suggesting cases could continue to grow at an increasing rate. Cases appearing in regions neighbouring Auckland in the last week suggest Delta has managed to cross the lockdown boundary (in response, the government moved those regions back into lockdown as well). Despite all this, Ardern is gradually easing lockdown restrictions in Auckland — a decision that would have been unthinkable two months ago.
In support of this change in approach, the government has pointed to significant strides in vaccination. During the lockdown, the vaccination rate took off as eligibility was finally extended to the entire general public above the age of 12. Whereas at the start of this lockdown only 22 percent of eligible New Zealanders were fully vaccinated, at the time of writing it is 65 percent of the eligible population (85 percent have had at least one dose). The government has indicated it wants 90 percent of the eligible population fully vaccinated before it stops primarily relying on lockdowns to combat the virus.
The lifting of restrictions will be extremely modest at first with the reopening of childcare centres and the allowing of two households to mix outdoors. Eventually, the government intends to allow hospitality and retail businesses in Auckland to reopen as well. The government is also making vaccination mandatory for teachers and frontline health workers and is developing a vaccine passport program.
The political reaction to the easing of restrictions, however, has not been kind. Aside from the confirmed restrictions above, there’s a lack of clarity about what the new overall strategy is beyond that point. Conservative opposition parties, which until relatively recently had supported elimination, bemoaned the lack of a clear timetable for opening up. Left-wing parties criticized the Government for making any move to lift restrictions at all. The Green Party has generally supported the Government on COVID to date, but on this occasion slammed the announcement. Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said that the Government’s reopening plan was “a modern form of genocide” (the vaccination rate among Māori, who are more likely to have underlying health conditions, is about two-thirds that of the general population).
It’s true that elimination is (or was) unsustainable. New Zealand’s status as some kind of COVID-free Shire within a virus-ravaged Middle Earth was based on severe restrictions on who can enter or leave the country and under what circumstances, in addition to aggressive lockdowns when the virus did find a way through. Even now, fully vaccinated citizens are still subject to strict quarantine requirements upon entry. The considerable human cost aside, such hard borders also present challenges in an economy as small and as open as New Zealand’s. This has not been much of a problem while other countries were locked down, but as global public health measures ease, New Zealand ends up at risk of being left behind if it tries to continue keeping COVID out indefinitely.
But at the same time, Ardern’s left-wing critics clearly have a point. As a point of comparison for Canadian readers, New Zealand has more people than Alberta, a lower vaccination rate (albeit one that’s fast catching up), and just 284 ICU beds. Although the public health restrictions New Zealand is leaving in place are considerably stricter than Alberta’s, the risks that the virus poses for more vulnerable communities (such as the immunocompromised, Māori, and Pacific Island communities) must surely have given cabinet pause before agreeing to any relaxation at all. The elimination strategy may have had to go sooner or later, but it’s hard to argue with those who think “later” was the more responsible option.
Finally, it seems somewhat frivolous, but New Zealanders are used to not having COVID in the community. They know that they have had a far better time living in the pandemic than most other OECD countries. Kiwis were always going to have to get used to some level of COVID in their communities, though. Delta has brought that point around sooner than some people might have expected, but it’s here now and the government has decided that now is the time to adjust from the conceptually simple question of “how to keep COVID out” to the messier (but more globally relevant) question of “how to live with it”. New Zealand has gone from leading the world to following, and only time will tell whether it can manage that transition better than everyone else.
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