A secret, supersized PPE order

The Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall, Trade Me creator Sam Morgan and former Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe joined forces to help ready the country to fight Covid19.

Together, they ordered 50 intensive care ventilators, seven planeloads of personal protective equipment (PPE) and protective clothing, and met with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern the Sunday before lockdown was announced to urge the Government not to delay shutting the country down to try to limit deaths and eradicate Covid-19.

Also in the group of senior business leaders were the founders of toymaker Zuru, Nick, Mat and Anna Mowbray. The trio have also been involved in raising money to keep Salvation Army foodbanks stocked, including by matching donations from the public with their own money.

Their efforts were outed in opinion article in the republished on which praised New Zealand’s lockdown, saying it had not flattened the curve towards the peak of Covid-19 infections but effectively ‘‘squashed’’ it.

‘‘A number of us guys had a meeting with the prime minister and [Finance Minister] Grant Robertson on the Sunday before lockdown,’’ Tindall said.

‘‘Some of us, Sam Morgan and I in particular, realised there was a lot of stuff not getting done. We basically took the bull by the horns along with the guys from Zuru, and used our own money and ordered up a whole heap of PPE gear. There’s actually seven planeloads coming. Two have arrived already.’’

They also worried New Zealand didn’t have enough ventilators, and moved to source some to give as many an severely ill people the chance of beating infection. ‘‘Of course, every ventilator manufacturer in the world was chocka,’’ he said.

A little Kiwi ingenuity followed, and the group has backed niche New Zealand manufacturers around the country to begin manufacturing once key parts can be sourced, though efforts to buy ventilators from overseas continued.

Tindall underwrote the purchase of 50 New Zealand-made ventilators at $60,000 each.

‘‘I said to the agent, place the order, and you have got my word I will pay for them, if the Government doesn’t,’’ Tindall said.

The team of business leaders sent Fyfe into Wellington under the police commissioner to find out what was needed that the team could help supply.

Though their efforts have helped the country’s preparedness, when the group met Ardern and Robertson, they found a government in little need of persuading to begin a lockdown.

Tindall believed the meeting may have sped up the plan to take the country into lockdown but the Government had already decided a lockdown would be needed to avoid New Zealand following Italy, Spain and France.

‘‘By the time we had the meeting, they had already made up their minds,’’ he said.

The businessmen went to the meeting armed with their reasons that New Zealand just had to get on with lockdown but Tindall said: ‘‘They said, ‘Hang on a minute. Relax. You don’t have to talk about that any more. We are on board and we are moving towards it’.’’

Tindall and Morgan became convinced lockdown was inevitable about two weeks before the meeting with the politicians.

‘‘We were just watching the numbers, and comparing all those countries where it was starting to skyrocket, and it was so blatantly obvious that unless we shut down, we would see the same,’’ Tindall said.

‘‘So we got pretty agitated about it, and started to talk to the Ministry of Health and politicians about it. There didn’t seem to be enough urgency but, behind the scenes, there was.’’

Waiting longer to go into lockdown could have cost the country 10 times as much, Tindall said. ‘‘The result for the country has been excellent.’’

Some countries, including possibly Australia, faced much longer lockdowns, which New Zealand could not afford, he said.

‘‘By stamping it out early, we can get back to work early. We were lucky as a country that our borrowings were low.’’

But even so, he said: ‘‘We might rack up a hell of a big debt, which takes us 30 years to repay.’’

The group of business leaders, and others working with them behind the scenes, had not sought publicity or thanks for their efforts.

‘‘There’s a whole bunch of people doing stuff behind the scenes, which we don’t really want publicity for,’’ Tindall said.

However, they have had some public thanks already.

The group developed the Government’s WhatsApp Covid-19 channel, launched on April 2, for which Ardern thanked Morgan and Fyfe.

‘‘I want to acknowledge the role the private sector has played in this development, particularly Rob Fyfe and Sam Morgan, and I thank them and the people who have worked with them at no cost on this,’’ she said.

‘‘Now, more than ever, is a time for public and private sectors to work together as we unite to help keep New Zealanders safe and to protect their businesses and jobs.’’

Tindall said: ‘‘We did the WhatsApp for the Government. We’re now working on one for the tracing.’’

‘‘Now, more than ever, is a time for public and private sectors to work together as we unite to help keep New Zealanders safe and to protect their businesses and jobs.’’

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

The business leaders had also been working on getting antibody testing to New Zealand, which can tell people who did not qualify for Covid-19 tests when there were so few available early on in the outbreak whether they had been exposed.

Tindall hoped antibody testing may begin in around two weeks.

When urging the prime minister to move to lockdown, Tindall said the business leaders did not think about the impact on the economy, nor how the country would exit lockdown.

‘‘To be brutally honest, all we were concerned about was a very large number of New Zealanders dying, and having seen what was happening with the hospital systems in Italy, France and Spain, which actually are pretty good, along with [Britain’s] National Health Service (NHS).’’

‘‘We thought, ‘Gosh, the most important thing is to get New Zealanders safe first’,’’ he said. ‘‘Then we will deal with the rest after that.’’

He said the groups were starting to think about how to exit lockdown now, and expected Chinese-style protocols to enable this to happen.

‘‘It will all depend on the protocols of keeping people safe, while allowing them to spend,’’ he said.

‘‘Coming into a cafe, you are going to have to give your name and details before you buy a coffee, so people can contact trace you,’’ he said.

‘‘You will probably either have to go past a temperature camera, or sanitise your hands.’’

These would be similar to the protocols faced by people in The Warehouse’s Shanghai office. ‘‘The very strict conditions the Chinese Government imposed on employees as they relaxed things is what we have to do here.’’

The businessmen have put up money for temperature-monitoring cameras that could spot people with heightened temperatures, Tindall said, but it was likely they would be limited to larger premises.

The cameras they were looking to use were developed to track pests in the wild as part of conservation efforts, and were made in New Zealand.

Smaller places like cafes would have to use old-school technology, such as visitor books in which people signed their names in order to be served. This would enable contact tracing to happen more easily to be able to control any localised outbreaks of Covid-19.

People who have been working effectively from home may have to continue for some time.

The next phase of planning to exit the lockdown would require some help for businesses to restart, Tindall believed, or many would not open their doors again.

‘‘So far, what they done is incredibly generous, $6 billion paid out to over a million Kiwis in subsidies, and some I think very good work with the Reserve Bank and the major banks in New Zealand, where they are all holding hands.’’

Some industries faced major changes. ‘‘The tourism industry is going to have to shrink dramatically,’’ he said.

Tindall was optimistic about New Zealand’s future, and grateful to live in a country that could feed itself, as opposed to nations that were net importers of food.

He was also grateful that the outbreak happened now, when the technology existed for many people to work from home, and after New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband infrastructure had been installed.

For a time, the future might be one of less wealth but New Zealanders could cope.

‘‘I was brought up in the 1950s. I remember what it was like for our family, and a lot of our friends at school. We hardly had any money but we had a great life, and we survived,’’ he said.