Australia’s Quarantine Systems Failures: Lessons for NZ

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021 | tedla55p | 1 Comment

Dr Leah Grout, Ameera Katar, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Nick Wilson (*Author details)

Aotearoa NZ and Australian states have successfully eliminated community transmission of COVID-19, albeit with occasional outbreaks from imported cases. Both countries have primarily used hotel-based quarantine for returning travellers, but still do not have optimal border control. In this blog we consider potential lessons from Australia’s 17 quarantine systems failures for NZ.

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How best to classify and count NZ’s border control failures in the COVID-19 pandemic?

Friday, February 12th, 2021 | tedla55p | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Leah Grout, Prof Michael Baker

In taking a systems approach to pandemic control, it is helpful to define what is meant by a “border control failure” so that such events can be used to guide performance improvement. This blog proposes specific definitions for the current context in Aotearoa NZ. It concludes that since July 2020, NZ has had at least 10 border control failures (9 via MIQ facilities and one via a port), and at least 5 “internal MIQ facility failures” involving spread between returnees.

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