Audrey Young: Where is Jacinda Ardern's collectivism when it is needed for Covid 19?

Health Minister Chris Hipkins, left, and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield at an earlier Covid press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

Collectivism is when the interests of the group are given priority over the individual.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used the word twice last week to describe the way NZ had managed to keep Covid-19 at bay, in a slight variation on the team of five million.

But her own Ministry of Health appears not to be practising it.

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield decided to delay until about 9pm identifying about 30 locations in Northland visited by someone who tested positive for Covid-19.

It was deemed more important to let the owners of the businesses know first that a Covid-position person entered their premises than to tell the public of Northland.

Anyone who scanned the relevant QR codes will be lucky. They will be informed electronically because, to her credit, the woman scanned religiously — still after the owners were told.

But thousands of forgetful or neglectful New Zealanders would have been wondering if they frequented the same places and had to keep checking various websites to see if new businesses had been added.

Many won't. And that could well mean that someone with the virus who doesn't know they have it will spread it further.

It would make much more sense to have revealed the locations straight away, in one go, in order to get maximum exposure to the public.

In an ideal world, an owner or manager of a business should be told first so they have a chance to manage their response and their staff.

The Winger Crescent testing centre in Whangarei. Photo / Adam Pearse

In a recent case of community transmission, that happened.

The young woman in question, a shop assistant and student in Auckland, identified five locations of interest she had been to when possibly contagious.

Those locations were revealed publicly within hours of the Ministry of Health finding out about them.

In this case, there are about 30 locations, not five. That would seem to be a bigger risk and an obvious reason to get the information made public quickly. Instead, it is the reason it was delayed to give officials time to contact the individual business owners. It made no sense.

The lists will be put up progressively, Bloomfield said.

But every hour counts and every day counts in the life of the Covid-19 virus, and more so with the contagious strains from Britain, Brazil or South Africa that are showing up at the border.

The collective interests of public health are clearly more important than the individual interests of businesses. Ardern needs to remind her officials of that.