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NEW ZEALAND’S ELIMINATION strategy for the coronavirus was driven as much by fear as it was ambition, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said.
Speaking to The Associated Press, she said the target grew from an early realisation the nation’s health system simply could not cope with a big outbreak.
When a number of unexplained cases showed up in August, Ardern found herself defending exaggerated claims from US President Donald Trump, who told crowds at rallies there was a massive resurgence and “It’s over for New Zealand. Everything’s gone”.
Reflecting on this, Ardern said while the new cases were deeply concerning, “to be described in that way was a misrepresentation of New Zealand’s position.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New Zealand’s response to the virus has been viewed among the most successful, together with actions taken by China, Taiwan and Thailand early on in the pandemic.
The country of five million people has counted just 25 deaths and managed to stem the spread of Covid-19, allowing people to return to workplaces, schools and packed sports stadiums without restrictions.
When the virus began hitting Europe early in the year, Ardern said the only two options countries were considering were herd immunity or flattening the curve. New Zealand opted for the latter, as did Ireland and many other countries.
“Originally, that’s where we started, because there just simply wasn’t really much of a view that elimination was possible,” she said.
But this thinking quickly changed.
“I remember my chief science adviser bringing me a graph that showed me what flattening the curve would look like for New Zealand. And where our hospital and health capacity was. And the curve wasn’t sitting under that line. So we knew that flattening the curve wasn’t sufficient for us.”
Ardern said she did not worry that elimination might prove impossible, because even if New Zealand did not get there, the approach still would have saved lives.
“The alternative is to set a lesser goal, and then still misfire,” she said.
Border closures and a strict lockdown in March got rid of the disease, and New Zealand went 102 days without any community spread. But then came the August outbreak in Auckland, which remains unexplained but likely originated abroad.
“We thought we were through the worst of it. And so it was a real psychological blow for people. And I felt that, too. So it was very, very tough,” Ardern said.
She said they had modelled different outbreak scenarios but the one that eventuated “was about the worst that you could even possibly imagine”.
That is because the outbreak had spread across multiple groups in densely populated areas, she said, and some who caught it had been attending large church gatherings.
But after a second lockdown in Auckland, New Zealand again stamped out the disease.
Ardern said she felt confident about her responses despite sometimes feeling a touch of imposter syndrome in her role as leader.
“You just have to get on with it. There’s a job to be done,” she said.
“Any self-doubt I ever have, just as a human being, doesn’t mean that always translates into doubt around what needs to be done.”
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I mean… she was the real person of the year.
New Zealand now has everything open, concerts, nightclubs, no masks
@Winston Smith: New Zealand is also an island thousands of miles from anywhere else who have no porous border with another state on their island. So what’s your point?
@JedBartlett: I have muted Winston as he is a troll, and a bad one at that, so I can’t see what he posted. But I’m sure he made no point. He rarely does. Like all sad little trolls he picks the view on each story that will be at odds with most people and goes with it. It really is sad
@JedBartlett:
Regardless of their geographic location the govt of nz provided leadership for their people and a clear and concise strategy. They made swift decisions when needed unlike here where there have been muddled messages from all levels.
@Winston Smith: except their border.
@Ger: no idea what Winstons trolling history is. Anyway, lived In NZ for a long time and yes it’s miles away from anywhere, but was heavily connected to the world via airlines especially from China and took the decision to close the borders. With the exception of international travel it’s like Covid never happened. What I like about this story is initially we were told we would flatten the curve: then it became obvious the health system was ill prepared to just flatten it we changed to eliminate it.
2020 is the year of the pivot! Nice to see
Politicians to do the same. The key now is to ensure we build up the health system like east Asia did to prepare for the next pandemic
@JedBartlett: Taiwan, Vietnam, Montenegro, Finland all have extremely low case nos too
@Thomas O’ Donnell: So which one are you going to emigrate to?
@JedBartlett: I was just pointing out that NZ isn’t the only country to have extremely low case nos so the isolated island argument doesn’t stand up. No need to get touchy about it.
@JedBartlett: I am literally stating a fact, Ireland has become a nation of mask obsessed, curtain twitches, I’m just letting people it’s not like that everywhere.
@Winston Smith: Mask obsessed, dear god.
@Winston Smith: Irish people aren’t willing to make the sacrifices elimination requires at the outset, never mind for infinity, we like to give out alot and do little more than that, New Zealand were really all in it together
@Thomas O’ Donnell: Montenegro has over 45,000 cases in a country of 622,000 people, with 415 new cases confirmed today. Not sure why you threw Montenegro into the mix. Finland over 30,000 cases – less than Ireland, but then its population is relatively isolated. It does have borders with Sweden, Norway and Russia, but pretty much no one lives anywhere near those borders.
@Ciaran Lowney: no doubt that NZ did some things really well and acted quickly but there is also a degree of luck involved. Northern Italy and Wuhan have strong connections via the fashion industry and there was a lot of travel between the two areas.. The virus was widespread in Europe before we knew it. NZ may have had visitors from China but as we know the virus was very much contained within Wuhan so if NZ didn’t have visitors from there then it would explain their relatively low infection rates. I think it’s more likely that the infections they had were from European travellers as opposed to from China. NZ is an island nation in the middle of nowhere whereas almost every European country shares at least one border with another, ourselves included.
@JedBartlett: we could have had quarantine and testing at airports and ports, instead we left them open, no testing at airports, except testing for the covid payment of course. Indeed our finance minister said we wouldn’t be preventing travel from highly infected regions as we need the revenue. We could have stopped travel, we didn’t.
@JedBartlett: Ireland is on an island. If the Irish government was really concerned, they could have closed the “porous” border by increasing people at border crossings and by using drone technology. They could have done that, regardless of whether Northern Ireland joined in participating, or not. So, stop bleating, you f00l.
Big yellow baby man is right as usual.
That’s why there is more cases in the west wing then the whole of new zealand. Its over alright baby man for you not new Zealand. Lol.
Jacinda for person of the year.
If only we lived on an island…
@Gavin Tobin: Yeah.. one that we didn’t have to share with the UK and with an inept Arlene.
Btw is her statement not also an admission that their health service is in tatters? Flattening the curve would still overwhelm it? Imagine we locked up our returning emigrants for 2 weeks like Jacinda did because our health service couldn’t handle any covid at all? You lot would be goin mental!
@David Clements: People would have accepted that. It’s better than worrying that you’re going to be like that school ski trip that’s probably responsible for hundreds of deaths.
The big airport hotels could have been turned into quarantines. You’d have tv, internet and food dropped outside the door. It would have cost a lot less than the unemployment is going to cost now, and it would only impact those who choose to travel, unlike unemployment which is hitting the poorest hardest.
@SC: eh what about travel between the republic and northern Ireland? If your answer is simply an all island approach then what about travel between NI and gb? This is the problem. Even If we accept quarantining tourists, we then have to consider commuters and all business travel too.
@David Clements: yes, business travel and commuters should also be restricted. We have 25% unemployment because of this virus and elderly people have no visitors. Countries who took it seriously and eradicated it have been back to work for months. The seemingly harsh measures were significantly less harsh in the long run.
@SC: yeah because we didn’t already have the severest lockdown in Europe. Take a hike!
@Machiavellian: the internal lockdown would not have been any harsher, we would have tested at airports, ports, used quarantine and would not be entering yet another harsh lock down in January. we’ve had more covid deaths in a week than New Zealand did for the entire pandemic.
she’s a great leader and may well be one if the best around. She made the appropriate call for HER country. Geography, both physical and political, defines almost all government actions. So far in this crisis maybe less than 10 leaders made the wrong call on Covid. Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, the Swedes and possibly the Dutch and Belgians. The rest seem to have responded consistently enough across the board. We may have endured more than some with restrictions but we have stemmed the tide twice. If we had new Zealand’s geography we would have new Zealand’s political culture and would have done the same. But we are part of Europe, inextricably linked to a once global leader next door, whose sick we were discussing treating here as their hospitals on this island have collapsed.
People just died of regular flu instead of covid
have your say