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Jason Gurney
Mahurangi epidemiologist Dr Jason Gurney says it’s essential that New Zealand be ready to repeatedly move up alert levels to combat transmission of Covid-19, even in the face of regular outbreaks of the disease.
“Rapidly moving up alert levels is a pain in the butt for everyone, but the alternative is much, much worse.” he says.
“I would strongly argue that it is unsustainable not to do whatever it takes to stamp out the virus before it overwhelms our communities and health system – which it would if left unchecked,”
“We only need to look at Melbourne to see what happens if we don’t go hard and early in response to a community outbreak.
“Melbourne has around five million people, too, but during this latest outbreak they are losing as many people to Covid-19 every day – around 20 – as we have lost in total since the beginning of 2020.”
Dr Gurney says that New Zealanders simply would not tolerate the sort of death rate occurring in Australia and other countries, such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, particularly given that New Zealand has been near to stopping the virus in its tracks.
“So we need to stay the course and part of that course may require us to occasionally ‘yank the chain’ and raise alert levels,” he says.
Dr Gurney concedes that the odds are against entirely keeping the disease out of New Zealand in the future, but believes that if the country can quickly detect new cases and contact-trace and quarantine those affected, then it’s possible to stop the disease overwhelming the country.
He says that New Zealand is learning from mistakes and getting smarter in its responses.
“The fact that we have different restrictions for those inside and outside Auckland gives us at least some evidence of a system that is learning about the virus, and changing how it responds to it.”
Dr Gurney adds that tight border controls are obviously essential but accidents and mistakes happen and the borders can’t be assumed to be watertight.
He says this is why good public health practices like social distancing, hand hygiene and keeping a record of where you have been need to be practiced all the time – “not just when we are in Alert Level 3 or 4”.
