Nau mai, haere mai.
Where were you four years ago today? Chances are you were just going about your normal daily business when news broke of New Zealand’s first confirmed case of COVID-19. After that, it all happened quickly – more cases, travel restrictions, emergency budgets, and then a nationwide lockdown in late March.
Normal daily business was not resumed for a long time – some might say it still hasn’t been, given the successive waves of infection by new variants that have swept the country. If we didn’t know what to expect four years ago, this pandemic clearly still holds surprises.
Writing on the fourth anniversary of New Zealand’s first COVID case, Michael Baker and colleagues make the point that “it wasn’t meant to be like this”. The (albeit terrible) 1918 influenza pandemic had been and gone within months, returning as a seasonal flu, but with nothing like the tenacity and adaptability of the SARS CoV-2 virus.
And while there will be few of us who didn’t feel some form of COVID fatigue from lockdowns and restrictions, they write, that can’t be allowed to get in the way of ongoing and sensible measures to minimise harm.
“One way to keep a focus on prevention and control would be to include these measures in an integrated respiratory infectious disease strategy. This would combine COVID-19 control measures with those used to protect against influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and other respiratory infections.”
Meanwhile, a new study of vaccine mandate effectiveness raises questions about just how well that controversial policy worked. As Jan Dewar and colleagues outline today, the mandates don’t appear to have driven any noticeable increase in (already very high) vaccination rates among health workers, but caused considerable distress in other ways.
Anticipating the unintended consequences of compulsion, the authors argue, should be a key part of any future pandemic policy. On this anniversary of the country’s first COVID case, let’s hope that day is a long way off.
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