New Zealand Covid-19 curbs saved lives but brought social fiscal costs

WELLINGTON – An inquiry into New Zealand’s Covid-19 response found that while the country’s strategy – one of the strictest in the world – helped limit infections and deaths, prolonged lockdowns and vaccine mandates imposed significant social and economic costs.

The Royal Commission made 24 recommendations aimed at strengthening the country’s preparedness for future pandemics, including regular assessments of fiscal resilience and clearer decision-making during crises, according to its report on March 10 in Wellington.

“The response strategy and settings weren’t always sufficiently responsive to changing circumstances; for example, they weren’t adapted early enough to deal with later variants of the virus,” the report found.

“At a time when speed was often critical, some decisions had to be made without enough information and data, or without sufficient consideration of all the impacts that might arise, or without important checks and monitoring.”

The findings cover the period from February 2021 to October 2022 and draw on public hearings, 31,000 submissions and 8,000 documents.

They follow an earlier phase of the inquiry that assessed the period through to January 2021.

While New Zealand’s health system and economy emerged in better shape than initially feared, with lower case numbers and fewer deaths per capita than many comparable countries, the commission said the country is still grappling with the long-term consequences of both the pandemic and the policy response.

“New Zealanders supported the initial 2020 response,” Health Minister Simeon Brown said in a statement.

“But the Commission has also found that restrictions continued longer than public health advice recommended, and that the economic costs were not given sufficient weight alongside the health response.”

New Zealand’s early border closures and strict lockdowns were internationally lauded and initially succeeded in keeping the virus largely at bay.

But public support waned as fatigue grew, particularly after workplace and occupational vaccine mandates were introduced in the second half of 2021.

Social divisions came to a head in early 2022, when about 3,000 protesters occupied Parliament grounds for 23 days in a demonstration that ended in violence, underscoring how polarising the response had become, the report said.

“It was one thing to implement and maintain a short-term elimination strategy to keep out or stamp out a disease. That was difficult enough. But when far more transmissible variants of the disease started making their way into the community, the difficulties compounded, especially as people became increasingly fatigued from life under pandemic restrictions.”

Opposition leader Chris Hipkins, whose Labour Party was in government during the Covid-19 pandemic, said the inquiry finds New Zealand’s response was “robust, with decisions that were considered, appropriate, and guided by the best evidence available at the time.” BLOOMBERG