Editorial: Our level best has beaten the Covid 19 coronavirus

Dr Ashley Bloomfield advises the team of five million to keep calm and carry on tracing. Photo / Kevin Stent, pool

EDITORIAL

Take a deep breath New Zealand. Hold your chins up and allow your chests to swell. You have stared down a pandemic with the sort of stoicism past generations have been acclaimed for.

There were few illusions about the effort required to break the chain of Covid-19 coronavirus transmissions. When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on March 14 that "we must go hard and we must go early", there were few dissenters. Many, in fact, were calling for harder and faster measures.

The overriding message during the level four lockdown was to stop. Stop shopping for anything not essential, stop contact with anyone outside your immediate household or essential work, stop the coronavirus from transferring around communities.

Despite easing restrictions over subsequent levels 3 and 2, it will be difficult for some to now heed the call to go. Go and support local businesses, go on a domestic holiday to support regional tourism and communities. Go about your life again.

At alert level 1, we can return without restrictions to work, school, sports and domestic travel, and get together with as many people as we want.

Controls at the borders remain, including health screening and testing for all arrivals, and mandatory 14-day managed quarantine or isolation.

As we unite to recover from the effects of Covid-19, it's still important to keep the basic hygiene measures, including washing hands and coughing or sneezing into our elbow.

We should all continue to keep track of where we've been and who we've seen to assist with rapid contact tracing. Businesses must help customers keep track of where they've been by displaying the NZ COVID Tracer QR code poster. Ardern has warned there will be more cases in New Zealand, and this is a heightened risk with eventual reopening of borders.

Under the relative freedom of level 1, our fate lies in our ability to quickly trace any further cases back to source and to those who may have also been exposed. There can be no concerted recovery if we are forced into lockdown levels to attempt again to stop the coronavirus leaping from host to host.

That we remain at an alert level, albeit the lowest, is a clear indication of the caution which must still be applied.

However, we must acknowledge what lies ahead. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described the pandemic as a "dual crisis" on health and economic fronts - with the two working against each other.

The economic crisis has only just begun as the 12-week wage subsidy ends and recession bites. The Government's advisory website reflected this in changing URL overnight on Monday from covid.govt.nz to uniteforrecovery.govt.nz.

In announcing no new cases for the 18th day in a row yesterday, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield also acknowledged other pains to come, including mental and physical wellbeing through missing out on care and the impact of the economic crisis on mental wellbeing.

Having vanquished the coronavirus crisis we have taken our first step; recovery is now the challenge and must become the focus.

Now is the hour for five million New Zealanders to shine.