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NZ’s COVID-19 response compared to selected other jurisdictions: Australia, Taiwan and the United States

Wednesday, August 26th, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Jennifer Summers, Dr Andy Anglemyer, Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Michael Baker

Media discourse in NZ has involved comparing NZ’s COVID-19 response with a range of other jurisdictions, especially: Australia, Taiwan and the US. In this blog we update the data comparisons for these selected places. We find that Taiwan is the top performer with a cumulative death rate that is around 1800 times lower than the US’s (for NZ the difference with the US is 136 times lower). Taiwan’s high quality performance still holds a number of lessons for NZ with its ongoing response.

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Eliminate the pandemic virus causing COVID-19 or risk an animal reservoir

Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof John Potter*

Elimination has been an effective strategy for New Zealand in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic virus (SARS-CoV-2). Most other countries have not pursued this goal and are ignoring the opportunity even now. SARS-CoV-2 is not manageable by the influenza playbook; its longer incubation period makes tracing and isolation more practicable and puts elimination within reach. There is one additional argument in favour of elimination: the longer the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus circulates in the human population, the greater is the likelihood that it will find a host among other animal species and that these will become a reservoir capable of transmission back to humans.

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Preventing Outbreaks of COVID-19 in NZ Associated with Air Travel from Australia: New Modelling Study of Alternatives to Quarantine

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020 | tedla55p | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Martin Eichner (*author details)

In this new study, we estimated the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks associated with air travel from Australia (with a low prevalence of COVID-19 infection) to NZ. We found that the combined use of exit and entry screening, two PCR tests (on days 3 and 12 in NZ), mask use and contact tracing, reduced the risk from one outbreak every 1.7 years (no interventions) to every 29.8 years (95% uncertainty interval: 0.8 to 110). This risk is similar to that achieved by the current system of 14 days quarantine, at one outbreak every 34.1 years (0.86 to 126). In conclusion, multi-layered interventions can markedly reduce the risk of importing the pandemic virus into a COVID-19-free nation like NZ. Whatever approach is chosen, careful management and evaluation will be needed.

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Five Key Reasons why NZ Should have an Official Inquiry into the Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thursday, June 11th, 2020 | tedla55p | 4 Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Jennifer Summers, A/Prof George Thomson, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker

Here we present five key reasons for why the NZ Government should establish an official inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic response. Such an inquiry could identify lessons for the near future (eg, for pandemic control if border control failures occur) but also identify lessons for the organisation and resourcing of public health more broadly. Fortunately, NZ has a fairly solid track record of official inquiries that have resulted in improved systems that advance public safety and public health.

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When can COVID-19 be Declared Eliminated from NZ? New Modelling Study

Monday, May 25th, 2020 | tedla55p | 4 Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Matthew Parry, Dr Ayesha Verrall, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Martin Eichner (author details*)

This blog details a recent modelling study we conducted. In it we estimated that it would take between 27 and 33 days of no new detected cases of COVID-19 for there to be a 95% probability of epidemic extinction in NZ (at around current testing levels). For a 99% probability of epidemic extinction, the equivalent time-period was 37 to 44 days. So now the country urgently needs the Ministry of Health to provide an official definition of elimination and to upgrade the data on its website so that the public, the media and researchers can monitor progress towards achieving the goal.

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