3 Pacific nations try diverging paths on COVID
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Cheryl Simpson was supposed to be celebrating her 60th birthday over lunch with friends but instead found herself confined to her Auckland home.
The discovery of a single local COVID-19 case in New Zealand was enough for the government to put the entire country into strict lockdown this past week. While others might see that as draconian, New Zealanders generally support such measures because they worked so well in the past.
“I’m happy to go into lockdown, even though I don’t like it,” said Simpson, owner of a day care center for dogs that is now closed because of the precautions. She said she wants the country to crush the latest outbreak: “I’d like to knock the bloody thing on the head.”
Elsewhere around the Pacific, though, Japan is resisting such measures in the face of a recordbreaking surge, instead emphasizing its accelerating vaccine program. And Australia has fallen somewhere in the middle.
All three countries got through the first year of the pandemic in relatively good shape but are now taking diverging paths in dealing with outbreaks of the delta variant.
Japan
Japan has never imposed lockdowns against the coronavirus. Before the delta variant, the country managed to keep a lid on coronavirus outbreaks in part because many people in Japan were already used to wearing surgical masks for protection from allergies or colds.
While strict protocols kept infections inside the Olympic Games to a minimum, experts such as Dr. Shigeru Omi, a key medical adviser to the government, say the games created a festive air that led people in Japan to lower their guard.
New cases in Japan have this month leaped to 25,000 each day, more than triple the highest previous peak. Omi considers that a disaster.
Many governors are urging much tougher restrictions. But Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said vaccines are “the way to go.”
Daily vaccinations in Japan increased tenfold from May to June, but a slow start has left the nation playing catch-up. Only about 40 percent of people are fully vaccinated.
Australia
In Australia, a delta outbreak hit Sydney in June. State authorities hesitated for 10 days before imposing lockdown measures across Sydney that have now dragged on for two months.
Australia’s federal government is pursuing a strategy it calls aggressive suppression — including strict controls on Australians leaving the country and foreigners entering — but is essentially letting state leaders call the shots.
New infections in Sydney have climbed from just a few each week before the latest outbreak to more than 800 a day.
“It’s not possible to eliminate it completely. We have to learn to live with it,” Gladys Berejiklian, premier of Sydney’s New South Wales state, said in what many interpreted as a retreat from state leaders’ previous determination to crush outbreaks entirely.
“That is why we have a dual strategy in New South Wales,” Berejiklian said. “Get those case numbers down, vaccination rates up. We have to achieve both in order for us to live freely into the future.”
But Australia lags far behind even Japan in getting people inoculated, with just 23 percent of people fully vaccinated.
New Zealand
Last year, soon after the pandemic first hit, neighboring New Zealand imposed a strict, nationwide lockdown and closed its border to non-residents. That wiped out the virus completely. The country of 5 million has been able to vanquish each outbreak since, recording just 26 virus deaths.
But this month, the Sydney outbreak spread to New Zealand, carried by a returning traveler.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promptly imposed the strictest form of lockdown.
By Sunday, the number of locally spread cases in New Zealand had grown to 72. Officials raced to track 10,000 more people who might have been exposed. Ardern has been steadfast. “We have been here before. We know the elimination strategy works. Cases rise, and then they fall, until we have none,” she said. “It’s tried and true. We just need to stick it out.”
New Zealand has been the slowest developed nation to put shots in arms, with just 20 percent of people fully vaccinated.