An economist believes New Zealand shouldn't be so cautious when future outbreaks of Covid-19 hit the country, having successfully negotiated lockdown twice, but Jacinda Ardern says they have the balance right.
Jacinda Ardern announcing Auckland will move to alert level 1. Photo: RNZ/Nathan Mckinnon
Modeller and economist Rodney Jones says the government has been too conservative with its approach to the Auckland cluster - believing the city's restrictions are being lifted a week late this Wednesday.
"The toolkit we have is really first class in terms of contact tracing, testing, and particularly the genome sequencing that gives us an enormous understanding of each outbreak.
"I think we can take more risk and we need to take this kind of learning into a future outbreak if it was to occur."
Jones said each week in lockdown accounts for 2 percent of GDP across the country.
"We forget how important each week is and by reducing the amount of time around lockdowns, we can still get back to zero and allow a bit more economic activity while we're doing it."
He said that in July, people around the country became overconfident and assumed the virus was never coming back, but now we're probably a bit too fearful and we risk building up fatigue.
"In some ways, 2021 is going to be more challenging as we move towards a vaccine and move towards leaving this vaccine behind us.
"We don't want to leave that responsiveness, but we also don't want to see what's happened in Europe where there's real fatigue."
However, Jones said New Zealand's response to the virus has been the best in the world and New Zealanders aren't acting like it.
But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report she rejects the idea the government took too long getting Auckland back to level 1.
"I don't believe we've been too cautious and you'll know, for instance, that even when we moved into level 2 there was some concern that we'd moved too early. There are others who thought we should've moved into level 1 earlier, we constantly get a bit of tension on either side there, but I'm confident we've made the right decision at the right time.
"Ultimately, if you pull back and look globally just as [Jones] has done, New Zealand is in a great position and I do think he makes a fair point that we probably don't spend as much time as we should just reflecting on where we are relative to the rest of the world."
She said that rather than being fearful, we should get to a position where New Zealanders feel confident.
"We have every right and reason to feel confident and that's because we've had a plan and that plan has worked for us on two occasions.
"When you look at the rest of the world we've they've had a resurgence, they're still struggling with it and many are looking to potentially go back into lockdown."
There has been some suggestion from experts, including Jones, that the government consider extra measures for people coming in from high risk countries.
Ardern said Cabinet has asked the health ministry to expedite advice on the issue.
"So far, the view has been that our system has done what it needs to do. We want to take a more targeted approach for those high risk countries; does it mean an extra test, does it mean a lengthier stay - that's advice I expect to come through from health in short order."
There have been grumblings from the National and Act parties that Ardern has been able to capitalise on Covid-19 for election gains, but she said that wouldn't be advantageous if the pandemic wasn't managed well and people need to understand that the leader of the opposition, Judith Collins, has signalled she would handle things differently.
"It is not a given that what we are rolling out is what every political party would do. People have to make a judgement call on who they trust to continue to take us through Covid."
