In supermarkets and coffee queues, New Zealand beards are reappearing. The masks, formerly a constant, have become irregular. Ubiquitous bottles of hand sanitizer began to disappear. In some places, laminated contact tracking codes are coming off the walls.
The country, which once adopted rapid blockades in the face of a single Covid case, has in recent months progressively reduced restrictions and continued as thousands of people have become infected. Now, looking down the barrel of a growing wave of infections and a growing number of deaths, New Zealand faces the question of whether it can regain its reputation for responding to Covid-19.
Despite high vaccination rates, this state seems tenuous. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, New Zealand is now among the top three countries in the world for the daily average of confirmed cases per 100,000 people and the top seven for deaths, ahead of Australia, the US and the United Kingdom. United. Per capita, their deaths for Covid have now surpassed those of Japan, a country that overcame the pandemic without blockages, but maintained a very high compliance of masks.
On Thursday, New Zealand reported 11,382 cases, 23 deaths and 765 people in hospital with Covid-19, and an average of seven days in the three-meter increase. Wastewater tests indicate that actual infection levels are much higher. Doctors say the tension in these cases has put the country “at risk of a catastrophic collapse of the health workforce.”
Faced with this, health officials and the minister met on Thursday to announce new measures: free masks and rapid antigen testing and expanded access to antiviral drugs. The main note given by the press conference, however, was a plea: health officials called on New Zealanders to rejoin the pandemic measures, to re-adopt the masks that many had rejected and to work together to curb the tide of infections.
“The success of New Zealand’s response to the pandemic so far has trusted people to do the right thing,” said health director general Ashleigh Bloomfield. “Our message here today is: it’s important that people commit again. We haven’t gone through that yet.”
“Ardern has been a bit far”
But for public health experts, one of the most pressing questions is not so much whether masks and other protections are available, but whether New Zealanders will move to adopt them.
“Better access to masks, rapid antigen testing, and antiviral medications will help reduce Covid-19 transmission if people use them. And that’s the big yes,” says Dr. Siouxsie Wiles, one of the prominent communicators of New Zealand’s response.
“We need to regain the spirit we had at the beginning of the pandemic: our actions count.”
In recent months, the government has been criticized for less cohesive communication about where the pandemic response is heading. The press conference on Thursday was attended by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, whose clear communication has been credited as a major contributor to the early success of the country’s pandemic. Ardern was abroad this week, but for months has been largely absent from Covid briefings or announcements, focusing instead on issues of global security, trade and the cost of living.
People wearing masks outside a Christchurch supermarket last year. Photography: Sanka Vidanagama / NurPhoto / REX / Shutterstock
“What has been especially interesting is how Ardern has ceased to be the face of the Covid pandemic,” says Dr. Lara Greaves, a political analyst at the University of Auckland’s Institute for Public Policy.
It’s a trend Greaves sees happening throughout the government, as other issues have made Covid out of the spotlight and politicians are worried about the political consequences of being message bearers for a bleak prospect of Covid.
“We’re not going to sit down at the 1 p.m. press conference,” Greaves says. “We’re not necessarily seeing the Covid brand everywhere … We’ve seen this drift really gradual.”
“We can’t be blasphemous about this”
Throughout the pandemic, higher levels of confidence in government and fellow citizens have been strongly correlated with successful public health outcomes. Now, social scientists say the fabric of that trust has been torn apart in New Zealand, but it hasn’t been completely broken.
“This is a situation of chronic stress for many years, and it still has a long way to go,” says Sir Peter Gluckman, the former prime minister’s scientific adviser, pediatrician and science expert in society. “People still think it’s all over and it’s not like that. Anxiety, fear, frustration … these emotions drive and fracture trust between people, between governments and citizens, and trust is the center of social cohesion.
“The small size of New Zealand and our relatively transparent discourse have protected us to a great extent,” he says. “It still protects us. But we can’t censor ourselves.”
The most visible rift in this cohesion came earlier this year, when a series of protests against the mandate against vaccines erupted in violence on the grass of parliament. Covid response minister Ayesha Verrall says these incidents, and their associated online movements, are on the minds of decision makers as they consider what steps the public will take.
“We believe that misinformation … has affected the effectiveness of the measures, and it only gives us back the responsibility to make sure we are sharing reliable and credible information,” he says. For now, the government remains committed not to reintroduce mandatory mandates or blockades from the past.
“In all the things we’ve done in response to Covid: ask people to stay home during the first confinement, to give their details to contact tracers, to wear masks, to get vaccinated, all the impacts on public health, 99.9% was voluntary compliance, ”he says. “This should be the basis of most of our public health efforts”
It is this history that Greaves says New Zealand will look forward to revitalizing in the coming months. “Working for New Zealand [is that] we put the 5 million team together in 2020, so this is more likely to happen again. … I think we will see a higher level of protest and a higher level of resistance, ”he says.
“But we will probably work from a stronger baseline”