A new set of Covid challenges

A year after the coronavirus outbreak officially became a pandemic, the Government and health authorities face a new set of challenges.

For a year, with the border closed, New Zealand was able to chart its course, making changes as it went along. The country was the petri dish in which the Government tested its elimination strategy. Comparisons with the chaos going on elsewhere worked in our favour.

We were worried about impacts on the economy and virus clusters, but only a few other countries were as effective at keeping their populations safe.

Still, success is fleeting. Now the world is well and truly into a new phase — vaccination and recovery.

The public here has been given a broad outline of our vaccine programme, but will increasingly want more detail.

While we are lucky to have time to do it properly, the experience of the past year suggests the authorities will need help to anticipate necessary changes.

Hopefully, the remit of the new Covid-19 advisory group includes the rollout, as a lot of decisions need to be made around how vaccines will help us reopen to the world.

New Zealand is only a team of 5 million yet the plan is to take all year to complete the rollout before the borders reopen.

The US has already given doses to 106 million people and fully vaccinated 36 million. It expects to be finished in July. The UK aims to give 32 million people considered priorities one dose by April 15. The remaining 21 million will have their first dose by the end of July.

Our steady timeline will come under pressure as other countries start to allow vaccinated people to fly without quarantines and more travel bubbles open. Australia is working with Singapore to open up one such bubble.

Travel bubbles have been stopstart affairs, and vaccination could provide the necessary stability for them to work. The planned database, with people able to digitally access their records, will be crucial to fly overseas and to get travel insurance.

Perhaps a combination of vaccination, self-isolation at home for a period after overseas travel, phone-tracking, and testing could work as a substitute for quarantine.

For all the debate over the future of international tourism in NZ, the Government will have to work out how to allow in vaccinated tourists. Gradually, the responsibility for a person’s health risk is going to have to return to them — rather than the Government deciding the rules.

The transition period for that to happen is going to require more flexibility than there is at the moment.