Editorial: A bubble pause and a Delta bullet dodged

People queue in their cars on Friday to get tested for Covid-19 at a pop-up testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Photo / AP

EDITORIAL:

The pandemic doesn't stand still and apparent victories against the coronavirus can be temporary advantages soon followed by setbacks.

Because of the Delta variant, both northern and southern countries are having to reassess.

This year northern countries got a health and morale boost from major vaccination campaigns, while nations in our region struggled to get doses in hand - let alone in people's arms.

Despite that, the transtasman travel bubble was launched in April.

In the north, people are eyeing travel this summer amid falling overall daily virus case numbers in countries such as the United States, Canada, France and Germany. The European Union's digital Covid certificate to ease tourism is due to start this week.

But at the same time, Delta infections are rising, including in Britain, Russia, Portugal and Italy. The variant is showing that low areas of vaccine take-up within populations can act as an oasis for the virus.

New Zealand and Australia are vulnerable to Covid-19 outbreaks while their overall vaccination levels stay low.

The flying weekend trip by a Sydneysider infected with the Delta variant to Wellington - which resulted in alert level 2 restrictions and more than 2200 Covid contacts - appears to have been the nearest of near misses. An actual superspreader event could be deadly here with our vaccine rollout slow to unfurl. So far, it's a Delta bullet dodged.

The Government's decision to pause the entire travel bubble for three days until midnight tomorrow is a reflection of that. It's unfortunate for travellers but many would argue it's warranted from a health perspective and buys political time for a rethink.

Across the Tasman millions of New South Wales residents have been plunged into a two-week lockdown after 82 cases focused on Sydney.

Comments by the state's chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant about unknowingly infectious cases in the community for "a number of days" highlight the pot-luck nature of the transtasman travel arrangement. Contact tracers identified a missing link between exposure venues which "unearthed a large number of cases".

For those Kiwis who haven't been tempted by the buyer-beware bubble, it could be more evidence that it just isn't worth it before vaccination is completed.

Here, the Government's goal is to get through the rollout by our summer and achieve as high a vaccination level as possible.

We are relying heavily on border protection, good luck, and a well-oiled test and trace system in the meantime. A better mask-use culture here would help - for not just public transport but also shopping and indoor events.

It seems highly unlikely that the rollout will be speeded up or that the transtasman bubble will be popped altogether. But both areas need a fresh look.

Quicker rollouts here and in Australia earlier this year would have allowed the bubble to operate far more smoothly. Instead it has been a bumpy ride that has just crashed.

In the northern hemisphere, there is now a shield wall of reasonable levels of vaccination, that protects against serious health outcomes.

Public Health England says that, of the 1320 people admitted to hospital there with Delta, four-fifths were unvaccinated or had received only one jab. Ninety per cent of the Delta cases in England have been in the under-50s age group.

Northern countries have been trying to plug shortcomings exposed by Delta, and have the great advantage of large vaccine supplies.

Here, we're on pony express vaccine deliveries and there have been leaks in the Australian border system. A wave of the coronavirus in Fiji has involved thousands of infections.

The see-sawing pandemics between north and south are still in motion.