‘A very strange year’
On February 28 last year New Zealand registered its first case of Covid-19 and our lives were never the same. People the Sunday Star-Times spoke to in those earliest days reflect on the year since, and we ask: What next? By
May Moncur knew what was coming, but nobody would listen.
When her flight from Hong Kong landed in New Zealand, the Auckland employment advocate says it was like entering a different world where the virus she’d seen overseas didn’t exist. Her waiting husband was bemused by the N95 mask she’d worn the entire flight, and told her to take it off.
Nearly a year on she recalls, ‘‘I told him ‘there is a pandemic, and the effect of this will be worse than the world war’, and he didn’t believe me.’’
Moncur’s flight landed in February 2020, just weeks before New Zealand’s first case of Covid19 was reported.The selfie she had snapped on a nearly empty flight between Beijing and Hong Kong became a harbinger for what lay ahead.
Once home, she self-isolated for two weeks and tried to tell people about what she’d experienced in Beijing, where people were taking serious precautions against the virus. There, she’d worn a mask and goggles to go shopping; in New Zealand she felt embarrassed covering her face.
‘‘I was telling people ‘this is coming’, but so few people were talking about it. The level of awareness was so low. Now I’m proud of the comments I made then.’’
It’s nearly one year since Covid first reared its deadly head in Aotearoa. On February 28, the positive results of a man in his 60s who’d travelled from Iran were made public; less than a month later Kiwis retreated into their homes for four weeks (to start with), teddy bears popped up on windowsills, and toilet paper became currency.
While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s March announcement that the country was plunging into lockdown was the beginning of New Zealand’s Covid battle for many people, some had been feeling the tension for months.
For Dr Paul Young, the horror was in the numbers.
As the coronavirus rampaged overseas at the beginning of 2020, the intensive care specialist knew what uncontrolled transmission meant for New Zealand. In Wellington Hospital alone, 500 people could be vying for 24 intensive care beds, and the implications of that were unimaginable.
‘‘It felt like we were standing on a beach with a tsunami coming, and we had nowhere to go.’’
One year later, he says the big wave never came, but it got close.
By February 2020, Young and his colleagues had been watching the developing pandemic for months. They’d crunched the numbers for Aotearoa, and they were devastating.
For the health professionals, it came down to spaces available in the country’s intensive care units where there are four beds for every 100,000 patients, and very little could be done to increase that capacity. Initially, the number of ventilators got a lot of attention, but without the highly skilled staff, more machinery would make little difference.
‘‘That’s akin to trying to do more operations by buying more scalpels.’’
In March, Young told New Zealanders they could save more lives by staying home than he could in the ICU.
Looking back, he says health workers like himself have benefited the most from New Zealand’s response to the pandemic, and chokes up reading an email from a colleague in the United States describing the hopeless battle to save lives in overwhelmed hospitals.
‘‘Elsewhere in the whole generation of world a frontline health workers ... will realise they’ve faced unimaginable psychological trauma while dealing with an impossible situation.’’
Young says that should New Zealand achieve herd immunity through vaccination, it will have overcome remarkable odds. Vaccinating border staff will provide an additional layer of defence, and as more Kiwis get vaccinated the risk to the country will progressively fall.
Clockwise from left: Sir Peter Gluckman, May Moncur and Professor Paul Spoonley.
It’s unlikely Covid will have any major impact on our intensive care units in the year ahead because our public health response is proven and effective.
‘‘I just cannot express how grateful I am to everyone in New Zealand for what they’ve done, for pulling together. I don’t necessarily know if people know what a remarkable thing that it is. I hope we can keep each other safe for years to come by people
getting on board and getting vaccinated, that’s what I hope for now.’’
On Friday, 25 health professionals became the first recipients of Aotearoa’s Covid-19 vaccines; yesterday they began immunising border workers. As the rollout continues, the country’s biggest issues will be stock, logistics and vaccine hesitancy. Experts warn the battle is far from over.