‘We will have to keep stamping Covid out until there is a vaccine’
PM and health chief emphasise that elimination an ongoing goal
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday warned New Zealanders the fight against Covid-19 won’t be over until there is a vaccine.
She made the comment after her remarks on Monday about eliminating the virus were reported by some media abroad as New Zealand winning a major battle.
Ardern said yesterday that elimination did not mean a point in time but that there would be a sustained effort to stamp out every new case.
And health chief Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who said he had an alert level 3 takeaway coffee yesterday, reiterated: “Elimination is not eradication.”
New Zealanders yesterday celebrated the first day out of lockdown by flocking to fast-food chains, local cafes or the beach.
About 75 per cent of the economy is now firing again, with about 1 million Kiwis back at work.
But as people took to their cars to return to their jobs or to the bumperto-bumper queues at the drivethroughs, many were caught short.
The Automobile Association said it had a record-breaking day — it was expecting to attend up to 1800 jobs by midnight, with 80 per cent of those being flat batteries.
Yesterday, New Zealand had its 10th straight day of single-digit coronavirus cases, with three new cases reported yesterday afternoon — and just 239 active cases in total. More than 80 per cent of cases have now recovered but there were nine people in hospital, including one in intensive care at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland. Meanwhile, police revealed more than 5800 breaches of the lockdown during alert level 4, with most culprits coming from Counties Manukau and Wellington.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the sacrifices Kiwis had made for 33 days had made a difference but alert level 3 wasn’t a time to get complacent. Bloomfield also warned against congregating outside takeaway joints or cafes and clarified that achieving elimination wasn’t a singular goal, but an ongoing and sustained effort. Asked whether he accepted his comments on Monday had given the country and the rest of the world a false impression, and whether he was concerned New Zealanders would be breathing a sigh of relief at a time they should still be vigilant, Bloomfield didn’t mince his words.
“I can just clarify we haven’t eliminated it and we haven’t eradicated it.” He said elimination was about having a low number of cases, and a knowledge of where they’re coming from and identifying people early.
Then it was a case of stamping out the virus and continuing to maintain strict border restrictions to be sure no new cases are being imported.
National Party health spokesman Michael Woodhouse said Bloomfield probably felt the need to clarify on behalf of the Prime Minister.
“This underscores the importance of talking in plain English. The public are not epidemiologists, they don’t have the same information the Prime Minister has and it’s really important they get on the same page, talk in English, and make it clear to New Zealanders where we’re at and how we’ve got to stay there.”
Ardern said elimination meant zero tolerance for new cases and an ongoing campaign.
“There is not one point in time that this mission ends now. Yes, we have [had elimination] in lockdown. The goal now is to keep up that work. We are now in the next phase of that battle and we are not done.”
New Zealand’s lockdown had achieved the goal of eliminating community transmission but there may still be some “smouldering ashes” of Covid-19 which had the potential to become a wildfire, Ardern said.
“We will have to keep stamping Covid out until there is a vaccine.”
During a hearing of the Epidemic Response Committee, a co-owner of Glenfield mall in Auckland, Dallas Pendergrast, was highly critical of the Government’s treatment of small and medium businesses in the lockdown.
She went as far as to call Ardern’s public gratitude to them “an insult” and said the current Covid-19 situation was “no risk to anybody”. “It’s been dramatised out of proportion.”
At the post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Ardern said the continuous goal of elimination was why some businesses had to stay shut at alert level 3.
Unlike offices, hospitality and retail customers and staff would interact with a lot of people daily which risked transmission and made contacttracing more difficult, she said.
The public would at least be given 48 hours’ notice about when we’d move down to alert level 2, she said.
And when asked whether the Government would provide cash grants or interest-free loans, Ardern said they were looking at what specific support could be offered after the wage subsidy dried up for businesses that were “vulnerable but viable”.
She urged commercial landlords to come to a workable arrangement for their tenants, but did not say whether the Government was considering legislative changes to enable commercial rent freezes.
The Government also yesterday announced 35 new employment centres across the country, and an online portal to connect employers with job seekers under a “Keep New Zealand Working” tag.
The bite of the lockdown is becoming even more apparent, with benefit numbers rising — almost 7000 went on Jobseeker Support last week.
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions meant unemployment would rise before it improved.
“The increase in benefit numbers was expected. It’s a global phenomenon.”