ONE YEAR DOWN THE ROAD Reflecting on the anniversary of the Covid-19 lockdown
One year on from New Zealand’s Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown, Whanganui community leaders are reflecting on the actions taken and lessons learned from that extraordinary time. They shared their experiences and memories with reporter Mike Tweed.
The first Covid-19 case was reported in New Zealand on February 28, 2020, and less than a month later the Government introduced a fourtiered alert level system to combat the threat of the escalating global pandemic.
From March 21 we entered alert level 2, and at 1.30pm on March 23 that moved to alert level 3.
A state of emergency was declared in New Zealand on March 26, at 12.12pm. At 11.59 that evening, the country entered an alert level 4 lockdown.
We would remain there for four weeks. The Whanganui community has since returned to a state of cautious normality, but the memories of that Government announcement are still fresh in people’s minds.
Whanganui mayor Hamish McDouall said the announcement of alert level 4 made him “a bit scared”.
“Because I’ve got a public role, I remember talking to my wife about maybe me going to live in our boathouse to keep my family safe,” McDouall said.
“I was really pleased that an early decision was made though, and I think you have to acknowledge the Government for that, and their ability to sift the chaff.
“When so many other countries were taking different stances, we went straight into lockdown.”
McDouall said making sure the Upokongaro cycle bridge was flown to its location on time had caused a “bit of a panic” in the days before lockdown, but it arrived before alert level 4 was implemented.
“It was great to get that across, otherwise there would have been an even greater delay.”
He had quickly become an intermediate school teacher in the first days of lockdown, McDouall said.
“You have to acknowledge all the parents who suddenly became teachers, and all the essential workers, like my sister who is a pharmacist, who just kept on going.
“Most importantly, I think my lesson from lockdown was that some older people really found it tough. Sure, I was calling up my mum every day at 5.30pm for a chat, but I knew she wasn’t alone and finding this isolation so odd and unusual.”
McDouall said he and his family were joined in their bubble by a backpacker who had stayed with them in the past.
“Having him there was great, and he stayed with us until he flew out on the very last Lufthansa repatriation flight.
“Ironically, he’s now locked down in Germany. He’s like a lot of young people who have had their study and travel plans thrown into chaos.
Like McDouall, Whanganui District Health Board chief executive Russell Simpson said his initial thought around lockdown was the prospect of isolating separately from his family.
“On March 16 we had established an integrated emergency operations centre to prepare for what was coming, but there was the surreal experience just prior to alert level 3 and 4 of not knowing what was coming,” Simpson said. “There was the need to coordinate so many moving parts to make sure, collectively, we kept the community safe.
“It gave us an opportunity to just throw all the rule books away and work collectively. That’s health, along with social agencies, iwi, Police, FENZ, and Civil Defence.
“We felt a sense of responsibility, but also a sense of empowerment, because we could make some decisions really quickly to make sure our community was protected from whatever was coming.”
There had been a “really eerie feeling” around the Whanganui district in the first days of lockdown, Simpson said.
“The streets were empty, and there were no cars on the roads. As I was heading off to work I was thinking about the personal impacts on people’s lives as a result of what we were doing to protect our community.
“The overwhelming support of our people working together to reduce the spread of Covid-19 was huge.
“My experience of the whole thing was positive, but there was a level of responsibility and heightened awareness that I’d never experienced in my career before.”
Reading reports and interviews from around 500 community agencies had highlighted the theme of togetherness, Simpson said.
“It’s been a real privilege to be reflecting on what I think was a successful approach [to Covid-19]. Having said that, I would encourage people to remain aware, and support us with the vaccine rollout, because that’s the only true way we can protect our community from what is still a global pandemic.”
Planning in the days leading up to lockdown was also key for Te Oranganui chief executive Wheturangi Walsh-Tapiata said.
“As a health provider, we were already really cognitive of what was happening nationally and internationally,” Walsh-Tapiata said.
“The most critical thing for us was the collective iwi position around lockdown, which was Te Ranga Tupua, at that time led by the likes of Gerrard Albert and Pahia Turia.
“The iwi collective came together and made some decisions instantly about what our response would be. For Te Oranganui, we had to fit in with their plan, specifically the establishment of an iwi hub.”
Operations had already begun a week before lockdown, WalshTapiata said.
“We were already in action setting those kinds of initiatives up and we had to think about how Te Oranganui would carry on ‘business as usual’.
“We still had to support all of the wha¯nau who may have been feeling quite anxious about how they were going to survive in the lockdown.”
Walsh-Tapiata said she had never worked so hard in her life.
“I was responding as the lead of a significant, iwi governed, health and social service organisation, and in addition we were responding at an iwi level to what all the other iwi organisations were doing.
“Thirdly, we were then looking at how we linked into the localised emergency operations centre. There were ‘zooies’ [Zoom conversations] from 7am until 10pm.
“If there was one message I wanted to get across, it was the leadership in a time of perceived crisis, that came from our iwi leaders and, for Te Oranganui, our responsibility as part of that response was quite significant.”
Being “imprisoned in our own homes” took a little while to adjust to for the local community, Rangit¯ıkei MP Ian McKelvie said.
“History will tell us whether we were right or wrong, and it might take 20 years for that to come out,” McKelvie said. “You have to say that, on the face of it, we appear to have done the right thing and we’ve got a very good result to date.
“We’re a long way from anywhere and that’s certainly to our advantage.”
From a personal perspective, McKelvie said adapting to life in lockdown was “fairly easy”.
“When you’re my age you’re very close to retirement, so you think ‘well if this is what retirement is like, maybe it’s not such a bad thing’.
“I live in rural New Zealand and while it was our job to stay at home, the world around us kept on going. Farming operations continued, and so did the defence base next door at Ohakea. Everything I could see was working as normal, well, except for me of course.”
For Harete Hipango, who was Whanganui’s MP at the time, her first memory of heading into alert level 4 was the thought of “right, this is serious stuff”.
“It was the first time in my lifetime, and that’s coming up six decades now, that the country had literally shutdown,” Hipango said. “Leading into those four weeks I got really sick, and it coincided with a time when tourists in Wellington came off the
Ruby Princess cruise liner.
“I was crook for about six weeks, and I tried to get Covid tests but couldn’t because there was criteria I didn’t meet apparently.
“I think there were systemic flaws
in that system, not people flaws, but in life there are things we can learn from and gain from moving forward.”
Despite not being able to “get out there and help people”, Hipango said she still managed to get a lot done.
“There were some really serious hardships out there, so it was about being constructive and productive and trying to facilitate help.
“I think for many, a good thing to come out of Covid-19 was that it made us reassess how we utilise our time and it highlighted the importance of people and each other.
“I also know that during that period there was some intensified relationship and family tension and conflicts, and that caused a flow-on effect to our local agencies.”
Whanganui Police area commander Inspector Nigel Allen said being a part of the community was key in the local police approach to lockdown.
“It was less about enforcement, and much more around the community taking ownership of the challenge and us working collectively to keep each other safe,” Allen said.
“I think we did extraordinarily well. “If you look at the way we formed our integrated emergency management centre across all of our agencies, that was a critical aspect of our response.
“From early on we were well connected, we understood each other’s positions and pressures, and we were well positioned through that integration to be able to respond.”
Allen said police “redesigned their service delivery” over the lockdown.
“It was never going to work if the police were there to simply enforce lockdown rules. We needed our response to be linked with the community. We know we have a model that works in the Whanganui community, and we’d absolutely look to replicate that going forward.”
Stuart Hylton returned from Australia and spent two weeks in isolation before taking on the role of local Covid-19 emergency response team head. “We had to think about what was important for Whanganui and what our response might look like,” Hylton said.
“From my perspective, your response is only as good as your planning, and Whanganui is very good at being connected.
“All the leaders coming together on behalf of their communities is something we do particularly well — ‘venturing into the unknown’ forced some assumptions to be made along the way, in terms of a health response to Covid-19.
“Setting up a response team is about getting the right people in the right jobs and thinking about all the ‘what ifs’. Those changed on a daily basis.”
While he was incredibly busy during the lockdown, Hylton said his thoughts were with those who weren’t, and those whose livelihoods had been taken away as a result of the pandemic. “It’s easy when you’re flat out and making key decisions, but for those who are forced to make some really hard decisions of their own, in terms of businesses, staff, and family, that’s more difficult.
“In the emergency management game it’s about being prepared for the unprepared, and being prepared to help yourself. We make decisions on behalf of people, but everyone needs to make them individually as well.
“That goes for every emergency we find ourselves in. You need to be resilient in yourself, and be prepared in your wha¯ nau, your house and your bubble to support yourself for as long as you can.”