New Zealand concedes 'COVID zero' strategy no longer viable as Delta outbreak grows

A Democratic country has just realized that controlling their people with rules of a Police State does not work.

Depends on the contact tracing and the continued viability of that very early on

If it is viable, place police guards out front of all houses/apartment blocks where people are staying

Yes its basically house arrest.

But the upside is its stopped in tracks

But if your not going to do that, then there is little point in the blunt tool of lockdowns which im very much against. You either go extremely hard early in a very draconian way or you let it run and pump up the vaccine supply very, very strongly and the there is nothing to say you cant do both, but once the contact tracing is unviable, your done in terms of the first option.

That's what happens when new variants are created that's more dangerous

People gotta stop making new variants

People gotta stop spreading the virus

I would say that the headline seems a little inaccurate. Chris Hipkins said: "raises some pretty big questions about the future of our long-term plans." A little bit less that "no longer viable" ;-)

There are a huge number of close contacts (around 1000?) and locations of interest (around 300) that the number of infected will rise. But I remain confident that the lockdown will work.

The big focus now is on vaccination with 80% expected by the end of Oct and all fully vaccinated by the end of the year. It is quite a bit slower than the rest of the world, but it seems that getting supplies is more difficult. In the US they are looking to administer 3rd doses and many foolishly decline to get vaccinated.

Ganbare NZ. You did a good job until now, you will make through this one too. Even if you have to adapt your response, including being more proactive in vaccination, if I understand right. You can do it.

Hahaha - I know it won't endear me to some people here, but ... I told you so!

The only solution to covid is vaccination and then just living with it. So what if it persists - so do many other fatal diseases. We don't panic about them, or report daily death rates. No lockdowns, no restrictions, no masks - just normality. Once you've been vaccinated the probability of dying from covid is vanishingly small. So small you can just forget about it - as I have. I now take no precautions whatsoever, and life feels so much better.

New Zealand concedes 'COVID zero' strategy no longer viable as Delta outbreak grows

Well that took a while for the to get. It is what those of use outside the mainstream media propaganda bubble have been pointing out for a long time.

Better late than never, I guess.

jiffy

It is nice to see thousands rise up and protest in Sydney.

Yeah, there is always some clowns ready to ruin it for everybody else.

The penny finally drops.

The Australian and NZ governments spent too much time patting themselves on the back. They should have been vaccinating as fast as they could whilst their case numbers were low. They are now nearly about 6-8 months behind the RotW as a result.

You cannot hide from a pandemic. You plough on through it with vaccines and get on with life.

I think a bit of pragmatism is starting to set in. Vaccinations starting to pick up with a record day on Friday, and Saturday was the record for a weekend. This lockdown may go on for a little while, in Auckland anyway, but financially the country can't afford to be isolated and to have business struggling.

If delta plus subvariants AY.3 , 3.1 or similar ever should prevail , you learn to know how a lockdown looks like and will be astonished that until now lockdowns not have been tried even once. That’s all still very moderate and a soft tender scratching on the upper tip of the real iceberg with only some masks, half-hearted restrictions, pseudo lockdowns, free choice of getting a vaccination or not. A joke so far, and the rising numbers are the result of that, although less funny.

I thought that NZ was also aiming to co-live with covid in the long run. "Zero covid" is impossible or very costly.

All the same, the country has already outstanding response records under great leadership, which very few can deny. It's time to renew and upgrade the overall strategy in accordance with an emerging situation.

The variants were not caused by the unvaccinated. One thing that does increase the appearance of variants is large-scale vaccination during a pandemic

False idea born from pure fantasy, all variants have appeared in unvaccinated populations, in the other hand places with high percentage of vaccination have not originated any variant.

Repeating something false you heard somewhere is bad enough, keep repeating it after it was proved to you it was false (and without you being able to defend it in any way) is much worse, it makes obvious the interest on deceiving people on purpose.

If a trial vaccine causes 25 deaths it is NEVER approved by the FDA. Newsflash, these experimental unapproved vaccines have already caused over 15,000 deaths. THEY WILL NEVER BE APPROVED.

Fortunately this is completely false, as simple to prove as the vaccines still enjoy the limited approval that would be impossible if the conspiracies were real, and soon they will get full approval. Unfortunately irrational people will never accept this and will keep repeating falsehoods to try and make others fall for the same mistakes.

When Covid/vaccine politics rears it ugly head, even before adding in cultural traits for governments to initiate lockdown policy, comparisons are of little consequence.

The New Zealand government is not remotely responsible for the shred of this pandemic, moving forward could be willing to change course.

The fact remains that Jacinda Ardern is not going to conjure a enhanced vaccine policy out of thin air.

Jacinda Ardern must lobby governments able, with the technology to manufacture vaccines to share resources.

Back on topic please.

Burning BushToday  03:11 pm JST

Sweden and Denmark have been right the whole time.

No mandates, no restrictions, don't force anything on anybody.

Jus common sense procedures and let herd immunity develop natural

There's that logic! I love it.

Yet the non-free thinkers resist it.

@burningbush

hahaha!!.. Swedens death rate for covid is 10 times higher than its neighbors, and it's economy is no better - their approach was a huge mistake which even their health minister has admitted.

According to The Economist about 15 million people have died of COVID-19. It's unstoppable. It'll eventually kill all those who are susceptible to it. NZ has now let the genie out of the bottle, which was inevitable because they had to reopen one day.

I'm surprised the article made no mention of the 'travel bubble' with Australia that's at the origin of this outbreak. What did they think was going to happen? It was a ludicrous idea that will now have catastrophic consequences.

It wasn’t New Zealand’s efforts that were successful at first, it was its small population and geography, right?

Isreal was a little unlucky, they were highly vaccinated 6 months ago, but the delta variant didn't exist then, and now it does, it's at the exact time the vaccines effectiveness is starting to wane, hence the need for booster shots.

"Covid Zero" is impossible , "Covid but not a lot" is doable I think even with the Delta.

NZ gave it a good effort. Now, it’s time to rapidly vaccinate the adult population.

@eviilbuddha

sorry, I must of missed the part where ardern was blaming anybody.

Some countries like Japan is not even trying hard any more to "push it down our throats about great they were doing with COVID». And "really important country" USA is absolute world champion for COVID infection cases. And will remain at that important anti-record position.

Simian LaneToday  02:35 pm JST

Another self-important country who like Australia, pushed it down our throats about great they were doing with COVID. The media too.

No mention of Ardern in this article. If things were going well her name would be pasted all over the place.

All politicians be it left, right, center, forward, backward are all the same. Take credit when things go well and blame the fall guy when things turn south.

Definitely they vaccinated too slowly - the only silver lining though is now delta has arrived, they are vaccinating at record daily rates and bookings have also now skyrocketed. At least thats something.

@anon…yep, police rule, we’re all under the thumb here…don’t let the truth get in the way of your post.

At least lockdowns assist in the short term.

It’s incredible New Zealand can’t stop Covid spreading there.

Welcome to the world of Oceania! Like your mates in Australia, police rule and lock downs for months or even years to come

New Zealand concedes 'COVID zero' strategy no longer viable as Delta outbreak grows

I'm speechless. But I will attempt to say something.

Um, yeah. That's what a lot of logical people were saying at the start of this last year.