Rules for level 4 lockdown need refining
Covid-19 remains in abeyance while Kiwis are at the bach and the beach this summer, but contingency planning for a resurgence shouldn’t be. More contagious strains of the virus originating in both theukand South Africa have arrived with travellers innewzealand’smanaged isolation facilities and the risk of a return to lockdown is rising.
Covid has spread into the community frommanagedisolation facilities at least half adozen times in asmanyrecent months. And scientist Shaun Hendyof the University of Auckland— who oversees most of the modelling that has informed government decisionmaking on moving alert levels— has warned thatnewzealand risks a reimposition of strict level 4 rules if one of the morecontagious virus strains escapes.
As policy goes it doesn’t getmuch moreblunt and undifferentiated than Newzealand’s level 4 lockdown. As the setting is currently drawn, all businesses and worksites must close, regardless of the risk they pose through virus spread, unless they are deemedessential.
Essential is a somewhatarbitrary designation that roughly corresponds with the goods sold in a supermarket. That’showweendedup with grapepicking and wine-making that went ahead and logging that stopped back in late March, April and earlymayof last year.
In July, the Cabinet resolved not to visit levels 3 or 4 on the whole country again if at all possible, but it did not rule out such an eventuality.
It is therefore imperative that the parameters be redrawn in case those restrictions are deployed again.
Setting aside the question of whether any lockdown is commensurate with the risk posed by Covid-19, level 4 especially needs to change. In particular, work that represents the greatest amount of economic activity with the smallest virus transmission risk should be permitted. Outside work is an obvious candidate.
There is evidence that virus transmission is low in outdoor settings. Andthe cost of keeping at homethose hundreds of thousands of workers, including well over 200,000 building and construction workers and tens of thousands in foresty, is staggering.
Treasury estimates that level 4 cost the country some$2 billion a weekin lost economic output. And in order to offset that shock, the Government deployed a sweeping wage subsidy to forestall awave of job losses. That layered on an additional cost of some$10b, though the subsidy covered awider range of circumstances than just business closure. Notably, the wagesubsidy to the construction sector through the autumnlockdown amounted to $1.4b, the single largest chunk of the total funds paid out.
Indeed, in an August report for the Minister of Finance, Treasury estimated that allowing outdoor work at alert level 4would reduce the overall cost of the setting by about
3.5 percentage points. Meaning that, by the estimates of the time, level 4 would curtail economic activity by roughly 36.5 per cent rather than 40 per cent, a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars aweek even without the wage subsidy cost factored in.
Evenhendyis broadly in favour of amending level 4 to a setting he calls 3.5.
“There is a case for amore refined and targeted level 4,” he said this week. Andthough he hassome worries about the particulars, he agreed that it makes sense to start by taking a closer look at outside workers. Indeed, he said one of his teams has done “a bit of work with thetreasury” on the prospect, though it isunpublished, and he couldn’t immediately recall its particulars.
There are other areas of work too, crying out for reconsideration.
Manufacturing, especially where it is highly automated, might sensibly be allowed to continue at level 4, and at lower alert levels physical distancing could be dispensed with if other mitigating measures were put in place (to date alert levels 2 and3 have required physical distancing in workplaces regardless of any other measures taken such as maskwearing and perspex screens between workers).
These aren’t just ideas pulled out of a hat, they’ve all been proposed by Treasury as modifications to reduce direct cost or improve productivity that remain in keeping with the Government’s Covid elimination strategy.
Newzealandmaynever have recourse to lockdown provisions again.
Fromfriday, travellers originating in theusand theukwill be required to test negative for Covid before beginning their travels.
Anda vaccine rollout is due to begin inapril (the opposition
National Party is pushing the Government to speedup the schedule which is slow by international standards).
But if politiciansmeanto keep a lockdown in their Covid toolkit, they need to sharpen it considerably.
Work that represents the greatest amount of economic activity
with the smallest virus transmission risk should be
permitted.