Covid 19 Omicron outbreak editorial: Dr Ash and the curve smashers

Director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield during a media update from Parliament in 2020. Photo / Mark Mitchell, File

EDITORIAL

On the world stage, New Zealand's face of the Covid-19 pandemic has been Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern - calm, reassuring, kind.

Here at home, we are more likely to conjure the frame of the geeky, fidgety, and enervated director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

At the outbreak of the pandemic, few outside his own department would have known his name. Soon enough, however, due to the hit daily video updates, Dr Ash became a household entity.

This week, with the Omicron wave still sweeping over the nation, it was announced Bloomfield has resigned, as have director of public health Dr Caroline McElnay and public health deputy director Dr Niki Stefanogiannis.

Senior Herald journalist Derek Cheng told The Front Page a major for the departures is Covid burnout and general fatigue.

Eventually and inevitably, two years of round-the-clock pressure to save lives from a killer scourge have taken their toll.

Not everything was perfect, our health system was woefully inadequate to deal with such an overwhelming threat and New Zealand suffered massive hardship in an attempt to prevent the worst.

A portion of our commitment to the effort was a result of Ardern's serene smile and easy poise. But many of us were also moved by the ill-at-ease director general of health who was thrust into the full public gaze.

At times, Bloomfield clearly did not want to be at the lectern delivering the advice we did not want to hear. But his awkward presence somehow emphasised the severity of the situation.

Together, we flattened the curve of the first incursions of the virus and then we smashed it. Bloomfield and his team should walk out tall.