The author standing in line at a supermarket on 9 April—at that time nobody knew how bad the pandemic was going to get or if the NZ approach would succeed.

New Zealand beats Coronavirus, again

NZ’s success in dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues. Can other places, like Hawaii, do the same?

An open message to the governments of the world — its time to take a fresh and deeper look at pursuing zero community transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Some might say I am premature in calling New Zealand’s second round against the virus a victory, but I’m going to anyway. The last recorded positive test for Auckland’s August outbreak was on 14 September. The size of the outbreak was 178. The outbreak’s falling number of active cases is just 34, and all are in isolation. All leads for tracing further infection have been exhausted.

New Zealand’s strategy to eliminate community transmission is working.

Key points:

• Contact tracing and communication are vital
• Trust in authority is important, the higher the trust, the greater the compliance
• Measures in New Zealand are currently lower than most other countries, (except border control measures)
• The economic costs are similar — IMF reports the GDP of New Zealand, Ireland, the USA, and Sweden will retract between 6.8–8.0%.