Originally Posted by
compressor stall
I don't think it's the best approach (due to precisely what's happened in NZ) but they are being held to ransom by the economy of the country (and the airline industry) to do anything else.
It’s not a fair call to make to say that elimination has failed in NZ. From the 1st of April our Director-General of Health in NZ has said elimination cannot be defined as a single point in time, but is an going process where flare ups and new cases will be discovered. But once new cases have been discovered all measures, including new lockdowns, will be implemented in order to control the spread.
The government has always tried to explain to the public that just because we’ve had no community transmission in NZ, doesn’t mean the worldwide pandemic has gone away. As seen in Melbourne all you need is an error in your Quarantine and Managed Isolation facilities to let it out. At least the errors made in Melbourne have shown once again, act fast before you loose control.
So yes, we’ve gone from no community transmission and will likely be locked down in Auckland for a few weeks or a month. But as we saw in NZ during April, lockdown works. But you just don’t do it once, you do it when you have to and if we have to do this every 5 months until such time treatments or vaccines are available, then so be it.
Our boarders won’t be open until mid next year. ScMo has already said for Australia it won’t be NZ to individual states, but to Australia as a whole.
Here is hoping the phase 3 trials prove successful later this year.