How New Zealand got rid of a virus that keeps spreading across the world!!!
By: Michael Baker, Amanda Kvalsvig, Nick Wilson
“Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone,”
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said in a statement on Sunday.
“However, as we all know, we can’t afford to be complacent.”
New Zealand just marked 100 days with no new domestic COVID-19 cases.
The country of 5 million people implemented strict lockdown measures in April. All restrictions on
New Zealand businesses were lifted by June, but its borders remain closed to outside visitors.
Now, bars, restaurants, and sporting events are open for business across New Zealand —
but health officials say they’re staying vigilant for another possible outbreak.
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New Zealand has made it 100 days without a single new local case of COVID-19,
the country’s Ministry of Health announced Sunday.
The public health milestone comes as coronavirus cases are spiking in other countries, including nearby Australia. The total number of cases in the US surpassed 5 million Sunday — by contrast, New Zealand has only reported 1,219 cases of the virus, most in April and May, and 23 of those cases remain active.
“It has been 100 days since the last case of Covid-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source,” the health ministry said in a statement Sunday. “No additional cases are reported as having recovered,
so there are still 23 active cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation facilities.”
New Zealand took an early, aggressive approach to stop the spread of the virus.
The country of 5 million people entered a hard lockdown in April that closed schools and nearly all businesses, including food delivery. By June, most restrictions were lifted in the country,
but New Zealand’s borders remain closed to foreigners and incoming New Zealanders
are required to self-quarantine for two weeks after arriving.
Now, life has returned to normal for most New Zealanders, with bars, restaurants, and sporting events open for business — but public health officials said they’re staying vigilant for the possibility of another outbreak.
Households should add masks to their emergency supply kits in the case of further Covid-19 outbreak,
Health Minister Chris Hipkins says.
From the first known case imported into New Zealand on February 26 to the last case of community transmission detected on May 1, elimination took 65 days.
How Did New Zealand Beat COVID-19?
New Zealand relied on three types of measures to get rid of the virus:
1. Ongoing border controls to stop Covid-19 from entering the country
2. A lockdown and physical distancing to stop community transmission
3. Case-based controls using testing, contact tracing and quarantine.
Collectively, these measures have achieved low case numbers and deaths compared with high-income
countries in Europe and North America that pursued a suppression strategy. New Zealand is one of a small number of jurisdictions – including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Australia and Fiji – pursuing Covid-19 containment or elimination. Most have had new outbreaks.
The exceptions are that of Taiwan, Fiji and New Zealand.
Australia adopted very similar responses to the pandemic and it is important to note that most states and territories are in the same position as New Zealand. But Victoria and, to a lesser extent,
New South Wales are seeing a significant resurgence.
The key difference is that New Zealand committed relatively early to a
clearly articulated elimination strategy and pursued it aggressively.
An intense lockdown proved highly effective at rapidly extinguishing the virus.
This difference can be seen graphically in this stringency index published by Oxford University’s
Our World in Data.
There are key lessons from New Zealand’s Covid-19 experience.
A vigorous, decisive response to the pandemic was highly effective at minimising cases and deaths.
New Zealand has the lowest Covid-19 death rate in the OECD.
Total all-cause deaths also dropped during the lockdown. This observation suggests it did not have severe negative effects on health, although it will almost certainly have some negative long-term effects.
Elimination of the virus appears to have allowed New Zealand to return to near-normal operation fairly rapidly, minimised economic damage compared with Australia. But the economic impact is likely to keep playing out over the coming months.
Getting through the pandemic —
We have gained a much better understanding of Covid-19 over the past eight months.
Without effective control measures, it is likely to continue to spread globally for many months to years, ultimately infecting billions and killing millions. The proportion of infected people who die appears to be slightly below 1%.
The infection can cause serious long-term consequences for some people. The largest uncertainties involve immunity to this virus, whether it can develop from exposure to infection or vaccines, and if it is long-lasting. The potential for treatment with antivirals and other therapeutics is also still uncertain.
This knowledge reinforces the huge benefits of sustaining elimination.
We know that if New Zealand were to experience widespread Covid-19 transmission,
the impact on Māori and Pasifika populations could be catastrophic.
We have previously described critical measures to get us through this period, including the use of fabric face masks, improving contact tracing with suitable digital tools, applying a science-based approach to border management, and the need for a dedicated national public health agency.
Maintaining elimination depends on adopting a highly strategic approach to risk management.
This approach involves choosing an optimal mix of interventions and using resources in the most efficient way to keep the risk of Covid-19 outbreaks at a consistently low level. Several measures can contribute to this goal over the next few months, while also allowing incremental increases in international travel:
• Resurgence planning for a border-control failure and outbreaks of various sizes,
with state-of-the-art contact tracing and an upgraded alert level system
• Ensuring all New Zealanders own a reusable fabric face mask with their
use built into the alert level system
• Conducting exercises and simulations to test outbreak management procedures,
possibly including “mass masking days” to engage the public in the response
• Carefully exploring processes to allow quarantine-free travel between jurisdictions free of Covid-19,
notably various Pacific Islands, Tasmania and Taiwan (which may require digital tracking
of arriving travelers for the first few weeks.)
• Planning for carefully managed inbound travel by key long-term visitor groups such as
tertiary students who would generally still need managed quarantine.
Building back better….
New Zealand cannot change the reality of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
But it can leverage possible benefits.
We should conduct an official inquiry into the Covid-19 response so we learn
everything we possibly can to improve our response capacity for future events.
We also need to establish a specialised national public health agency to
manage serious threats to public health and provide critical mass to advance public health generally.
Such an agency appears to have been a key factor in the success of Taiwan,
which avoided a costly lockdown entirely.
Business as usual should not be an option for the recovery phase.
A recent Massey University survey suggests seven out of ten New Zealanders
support a green recovery approach.
New Zealand’s elimination of Covid-19 has drawn attention worldwide.
We’re about to publish an overview of the approach in the New England Journal of Medicine.
We support a rejuvenated World Health Organization that could roll out an elimination model
in other countries where there is public support for this approach.
Covid-19 coronavirus: How to be prepared for a second wave of the virus.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/
news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12354564
Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago; Amanda Kvalsvig,
Senior Research Fellow, Department of Public Health, University of Otago,
and Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Read the original article.