![]() At great cost, the policy had ‘worked’, but there was no endpoint to it that did not involve isolation from the international community forever. When the Covid vaccines arrived in December 2020, they offered a way out of the Zero Covid trap that New Zealand found itself in. During one lockdown in September 2021, two enterprising citizens smuggled contraband Kentucky Fried Chicken into Auckland from outside the city limits and were arrested for the crime. This pattern repeated itself over and over during the pandemic, often including sharp restrictions on freedom of movement across the country. After 100 days with no community transmission, in August 2020, the emergence of a few cases led Ardern’s government to impose a stay-at-home order in Auckland and restrictions on gatherings in the rest of the country. Looming over the citizens of New Zealand throughout its Zero Covid glory days was the threat of another lockdown whenever the public-health authorities found even a single case on the island. ![]() In July 2022, inflation reached 7.3 per cent, sharply reducing the purchasing power of New Zealanders. The New Zealand economy shrank by two per cent in 2020 despite Zero Covid, recovered to grow by 5.6 per cent in 2021, but shrank again in the first quarter of 2022 as Omicron cases spread throughout the nation. New Zealand’s typically robust tourist industry collapsed as overseas visitors stopped coming. There was economic damage as well during the Zero Covid period. Despite effectively zero community spread of Covid in 2021, the average of weekly mortality levels was higher than expected, given mortality patterns from before the pandemic. The two-month-long lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic led many to delay essential health services, subsequently causing overburdened hospital systems and long delays in medical care for tens of thousands of New Zealanders that continue to this day. Closed borders meant many ex-pats faced steep hurdles returning home, even to care for sick family members. The Zero Covid success, however, was far from costless or complete. Intermittent lockdowns and lockdown harms Shutting itself off from the rest of the world is possible in New Zealand in a way that is impossible elsewhere. Second, New Zealand is an island nation with the majority of international traffic coming in through a single airport in Auckland. If this highly infectious virus had landed on New Zealand’s shores in its winter, the virus would have spread more readily. Although it can spread out of season, Covid has a seasonal pattern, and winter is its season. First, Covid likely first arrived in New Zealand in early 2020 – midsummer in the southern hemisphere. Why did New Zealand succeed in those early months in eliminating Covid? It had two significant advantages that many other countries lacked. In the New England Journal of Medicine, experts funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand bragged about how New Zealand’s strategy of lockdown, closed borders, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine had conquered the virus afflicting much of the rest of the world. While much of the rest of the world suffered through pandemic and lockdown misery in 2020, New Zealand residents proudly posted pictures on social-media sites of normal life. On most days throughout 20, New Zealand reported no new Covid cases. Just over a month into New Zealand’s sharp two-month lockdown, Covid cases dropped to zero.
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