Response to clusters ‘too reactive’
Review says success of plan to control Covid down to luck as well as judgment
The scramble to contain one of last year’s Covid clusters was too reactive, lacked accountability and didn’t seek enough expertise outside the health sector, a review has found.
While acknowledging the overall response to Auckland’s August Covid outbreak was “outstanding”, the Rapid Review of the Covid-19 All-ofgovernment Response identified a number of shortcomings that may have made a difference if they were in place when the cluster emerged.
The August cluster — which had 179 cases and included three deaths — began after four community cases emerged on August 11 last year, sending Auckland into level 3 for two and half weeks, level “2.5” for three and a half weeks, and level 2 for two and half weeks. The rest of the country spent six weeks at level 2.
The Government says the key recommendations have been implemented, but the review has led to questions about the role of luck in keeping our communities Covid-free.
The Government’s rapid response plan to a new community outbreak — which Cabinet had signed off the day before the cluster’s cases first emerged — hadn’t been stress-tested when the outbreak was detected.
The surge capacity of contacttracing had also yet to be stresstested, even though director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said more than two months earlier it would be in “the next few weeks”.
The contact-tracing gold standard is to reach 80 per cent of case contacts within 48 hours of a positive case but only 60 per cent were reached for the August cluster.
“Preparation and planning could have been improved between the initial outbreak [in March] and the August resurgence,” said the review, led by Security Intelligence Service director Rebecca Kitteridge.
Interviewees told the review that the response was “largely reactive”, and the need to get ahead of risks and issues before they arose was “critical”.
The review singled out travel exemptions for people to move in and out of Auckland during level 3 as particularly problematic; 10 days into lockdown, the Government made changes — including the ability to transit through Auckland without stopping to travel for work — to smooth out the issues.
The review also said agencies felt there was no single governance structure tasked with governing the response, and pointed to roles being hurriedly put into place for the March-april lockdown.
Act leader David Seymour said the review showed how lucky New Zealand had been in avoiding more or bigger outbreaks, despite cases that seemed likely to pass on the virus.
“We did not use the 102 days we were Covid-free to mend the roof while the sun was shining. We had a number of natural advantages and I think the Government has been overly credited for the outcome.
“With vaccinations, variants of the virus, new technology for testing and tracing, public fatigue of the old measures — we’re going to need a more sophisticated response. ”