Shift up levels marks first year with Covid
Exactly one year ago yesterday, the first case of Covid-19 in New Zealand was reported in a returnee from Iran.
Now, Auckland has been put back into alert level 3 lockdown and the rest of the country pushed into alert level 2. This latest lockdown comes after a 21-year-old tested positive for the virus.
Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles said looking back to February 28, 2020, she distinctly remembers warning people this was something that could last, potentially for years.
‘‘But I was thinking more globally than locally,’’ Wiles said.
‘‘But the important point is whatever is happening globally impacts on us.’’
Wiles said she was ‘‘proud of and grateful for’’ New Zealand’s response to the virus and although the country was marking the anniversary by moving up alert levels, it was because it was needed.
What continued to astonish her was how other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, had not done what was needed to control the virus, and it had put everyone else at risk.
Wiles said Covid-19 was something New Zealand – and the rest of the world – would have to accept would be around for some time to come. But what New Zealand would look like on February 28, 2022, was unknown. ‘‘It depends on decisions that are made over the next few months around balancing both the global rollout of the vaccine with getting cases down so that new variants do not emerge that make those vaccines useless.’’
Wiles said it was clear the Government was trying to deal with each outbreak in the least disruptive way. ‘‘We are going to end up playing a game of whack-a-mole because it is inevitable that occasionally the virus will get through our defences and that then teaches us something new we need to bolster,’’ Wiles said. Thinking back to one year ago, epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker also said he saw Covid-19 still being an issue today. But Baker said he believed New Zealand would be in a much better place in a year’s time. Baker said New Zealand’s border security and managing of outbreaks would be much better. He also thought by this time most people who wanted to be would be vaccinated.
It would be ‘‘very hard’’ for the virus to circulate and he believed it would be mostly eliminated from New Zealand.