![]() ![]() It will show that with one famous exception-discussed below-New Zealand’s battle to contain the virus followed the classic pattern ordained by the science of virus transmission: stopping the influx of the virus from arriving travelers procuring personal protective equipment to protect essential workers testing, contact tracing, and isolating those who test positive and, most of all, mobilizing the public to lockdown and socially distance so as to slow or break the chain of transmission. This essay examines the key elements of New Zealand’s successful COVID-19 strategy, as contrasted with the familiar and less successful response of the United States. COVID-19 cases and over 110,000 deaths, as of June 8, with tens of thousands of new cases and between 500 and 1,500 new deaths reported every day. The United States has reported nearly 2 million U.S. The United States, by contrast, has pursued a very different path with very different results. The cumulative toll of confirmed and probable number of cases in New Zealand over the four month period from the onset of the virus to its elimination stands at 1,504 cases with only 22 deaths (equivalent in percentage-of-population terms to 103,776 American cases with 1,518 deaths). ![]() New Zealand’s border remains closed to all but returning residents, who must quarantine upon arrival, but the virus has-for now-been eliminated from New Zealand. The last known case of COVID-19 in New Zealand has recovered, and all domestic restrictions on personal and economic activity are now lifted. Today, media outlets are reporting that New Zealand has not experienced a new case of COVID-19 for seventeen days. #One total lockdown lessons world full#Rather than settle for traditional mitigation strategies, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, with the full support of New Zealand’s business community, adopted an aggressive strategy aimed at eliminating the virus. Once community transmission of the virus was established in New Zealand, as indeed occurred, epidemiological models suggested that a traditional “curve-flattening” response might have produced upwards of 14,000 deaths from COVID-19 in New Zealand (equivalent as a percentage of national population to 966,000 American deaths). With China and Europe traditionally accounting for a large share of New Zealand’s summer influx of visitors, COVID-19 could have spelled disaster for this island country. COVID-19 came to New Zealand shortly before February 28, 2020, in the middle of its summer tourism season. Countries’ performance in meeting that test can be measured in brutally objective terms: cases of disease and death, lost jobs, lost gross domestic product, and lost social cohesion.īy virtually any measure, New Zealand’s government has passed its COVID-19 test with high honors. Faced with a global pandemic threat, every government on the planet faces essentially the same public health challenge: to protect its people from a deadly contagious disease by regulating private and public conduct to minimize disease transmission-at a manageable cost to the economy. ![]() COVID-19 is, in a sense, the ultimate final exam in administrative law and governance. ![]()
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