Editorial: Is history doomed to repeat with the new coronavirus variant?

People queue up to get Covid-19 booster injections outside a vaccination centre in a University College London building, in Britain. Photo / AP

Editorial

Covid-19 is providing an unwelcome sense of deja vu in the Northern Hemisphere with coronavirus case surges and re-introduced health measures in the winter cold.

But there's a different kind of deja vu stirring in New Zealand. It's dredging up memories of the period before the mid-August outbreak of Delta in Auckland.

Back then the country's vaccination rate was low, the rollout was moving too slowly, dose supplies were being staggered, and a breach of the Delta variant at the border seemed highly possible.

Many people feared that New Zealand's luck would run out and that we were sitting ducks.

Fast-forward five months and it appears that the country is in a much better position against Delta.

Case numbers continue to slide, reaching 55 on Sunday. More than eight million vaccines have now been delivered. Vaccination rates continue to improve with Canterbury at an impressive 98 per cent of first doses and 94 per cent of second doses.

Considering Delta is the version of Covid inside the country, that should mean New Zealand is in a very good position. The problem is that the Omicron variant which is turning up in MIQ, is different to Delta.

Early data suggests it has erased some of the protectiveness of vaccines - although two shots topped up with a booster jab provide an estimated 85 per cent effectiveness against severe Covid.

An Imperial College London study found that without a booster, protection against bad outcomes with Omicron could drop to about 40 per cent for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in a worst case scenario six months after the second dose. And by then two jabs showed about 20 per cent protection against basic infection, down from 60 per cent against Delta.

Omicron is expected to cause more "'breakthrough" basic infections among the vaccinated.

So far 3.8 million Kiwis - 90 per cent of the eligible population - have received two doses. Yet as of Sunday only 24,549 third primary doses and 212,905 booster jabs have been delivered. Children aged under 12 are still unprotected.

In an analysis comparing countries' situations versus Delta and Omicron, the Economist says: "Countries like Australia, China, New Zealand and Norway, with strong vaccination programmes but few prior infections and a slow rollout of boosters, are particularly vulnerable to the new variant".

It says that "delaying re-opening until boosters are given to their entire populations ... would take months ... by then booster efficacy would have waned in the highest-risk groups".

New Zealand is reliant on its borders holding the fort while boosters are delivered quickly to many more Kiwis. We are not protected enough against Omicron and a leak of the variant into the community is more than likely with daily new cases in MIQ and past experience. This is where the deja vu comes in and a fear that history might repeat itself.

"We should really plan on the Omicron variant potentially escaping into New Zealand in the next few months, and we know that a booster not only protects you very well against Omicron but also the Delta variant," epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker said.

What is known so far about Omicron clearly points to people needing three shots rather than two. As the old song goes, ''two out of three ain't bad". But it's not enough.