Source: Radio New Zealand
As the final report on how New Zealand handled the Covid-19 pandemic is released, a ninth wave of the virus is hitting communities. RNZ / Marika Khabazi
A deadly Covid wave returns, just as New Zealand gets its final pandemic report card
Another wave of Covid-19 is circulating again through New Zealand communities, pushing up hospitalisations and deaths, and reminding Kiwis of a time they hoped was a distant memory.
The arrival of the ninth wave coincides with the delivery of the long-awaited final report card on how New Zealand handled the Covid pandemic.
Health experts say wastewater monitoring suggests community transmission is at its highest level in more than six months, and already in a single week, 50 hospitalisations and 19 deaths linked to the virus have been reported, underscoring that the virus remains one of the country’s most serious infectious diseases.
“It’s going to be infecting thousands of people every day, giving some people long Covid and obviously putting people in hospital and killing some people,” epidemiologist and Professor of Public Health Michael Baker tells The Detail.
“So, it’s still our most important and infectious disease. It’s still ahead of influenza, which, in the past, was our most impactful infection. So, we need to take it seriously.
Professor Michael Baker Supplied / Department of Public Health
He says the latest surge appears to be driven largely by waning immunity and declining booster uptake, rather than a dramatically new variant.
“It’s just the dynamics between the virus that wants to infect us and our own immunity, which is usually very good at stopping it. But when the virus gets an edge, then we get more cases.
“The most likely cause is that it’s quite a long time since many people were last infected, but even more important, people are not getting their boosters, so they are missing that opportunity to top up their antibodies.”
He puts that down to complacency.
“I think that really summarises it. And there is an element of not wanting to think about it because for many people it was a very difficult time in their lives … people want to put it in their rearview mirror and move on.
“[But] we can’t afford to not think about this virus and act on it.”
Unlike earlier surges, he says this wave is not being tracked by mass testing.
In part, because rapid antigen tests are no longer free and fewer people are reporting results, meaning official case numbers capture only a fraction of infections.
Instead, health authorities are relying on hospital admissions and wastewater analysis to get a clearer picture of the situation.
“We have still got very good surveillance systems that are not affected by how much energy people have to do that [test]”, says Professor Baker, who advises New Zealanders to test, get a booster, wear a mask if necessary, and isolate for five days if positive.
Just as the virus surges again, the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 has been released – an extensive examination of how New Zealand navigated the crisis.
“Overall, this report concludes that Aotearoa New Zealand did well in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. On the whole, the decisions taken and methods used during the Covid-19 response were considered and appropriate,” the commissioners wrote.
“We have also identified where they were lacking. New Zealand’s response strategy and settings weren’t always sufficiently responsive to changing circumstances; for example, they weren’t adapted early enough to deal with later variants of the virus. At a time when speed was often critical, some decisions had to be made without enough information and data, or without sufficient consideration of all the impacts that might arise, or without important checks and monitoring.”
The commission has issued recommendations aimed at strengthening New Zealand’s response to future pandemics, which Baker welcomes.
“They are great documents, we have now got a lot of really good recommendations, very good analysis of the issues.
“So, I think the challenge now is to act on these recommendations and do it quickly because we could get another pandemic of the intensity of Covid-19, any day, or we could get something much worse.”
He says the elimination strategy was “highly successful – it basically kept us largely Covid-free for a couple of years while people got vaccinated … we have got a lot to be grateful for.”
The government isn’t as impressed, highlighting that the report notes that Auckland was kept in lockdown, despite receiving advice that restrictions could end sooner.
“When you look at the report, it’s pretty equivocal on most of these points; it’s saying the decision makers were doing the best they could with incomplete information,” Professor Baker says.
“You could argue, in hindsight perhaps, that lockdowns in Auckland should have been ended sooner, but you have to do what we call a counter-factual analysis, and what would that have looked like?
“And we would have had Delta, the Delta outbreak, which was being controlled in Auckland, spreading throughout the country. It was much more harmful than Omicron, which came after that.
“It might have put a real dampener on business and social activities over that summer period for the whole country.”
Six years after the first case arrived in the country, the virus remains a persistent threat – even as the country continues to debate how it handled the original crisis.
And as this latest wave shows, Covid-19 is not just a chapter in New Zealand’s past. It remains part of its future.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
