Two years ago Whanganui was in its first day of Covid-19 lockdown. Photo / Bevan Conley
Two years ago this Saturday New Zealand was in its first full day of Covid-19 lockdown. We talk to local community leaders and the public about their experiences at that time and since.
Russell Simpson says the past two years has felt like "a long time".
"The most we have learned is how to adapt to an ever-changing environment," the Whanganui District Health Board chief executive said.
"We have been significantly tested and under massive pressure, all at a time when our community has a heightened level of anxiety.
"It has felt like a test of endurance. Generally, with any natural disaster or mass casualty event, it's time stamped. It happens and is over within a short period of time."
As a health system, managing unpredictable surges in demand was something that had been learned since 2020.
"What I really believe is that our entire health workforce has been resilient and unflappable in terms of turning up for work and continuing to keep the community safe and cared for.
"At the same time they are putting themselves and their own families at a greater level of risk than prior to 2020.
"We do have a workforce that is fatigued, and I am concerned for the welfare of our workforce."
Simpson said, overall, most of the planning had worked since the pandemic began.
"We can reflect back on the last two years and think the majority of what we have done has been relatively successful. That is evidenced by a very low death rate compared with many other countries."
As for the next 12 months, the virus was likely to mutate again, Simpson said.
"That is based on what we are seeing internationally. There will be additional waves coming through. I see us living with Covid in our communities and it becoming endemic."
Simpson said when the first wave of Covid-19 hit New Zealand's shores, planning was for the worst-case scenario.
That involved mass casualties and significant impacts on "all of our lives", and there was a real sense of fear in the initial few months.
"Two years on, having not seen that come to fruition but acknowledging that there will be more deaths from Covid in the coming months, the numbers are nowhere near what we had initially planned for.
"I take heart from that."
The first lockdown came with some worry to Pahia Turia, chairman of Rangitīkei-based iwi Nga Wairiki Ngati Apa and the Whanganui & Partners board, but he shared it with a daughter and her family and it was a great chance to reconnect.
"As a whānau, we loved it."
Turia knew it wasn't so good for others in small houses and lacking income.
The next alert levels were difficult for his governance roles, and divisive both there and within families, he said.
"People have a right to choose, whether we agree with it or not. That became very difficult with the rhetoric that was coming out."
He said it was too early for the Whanganui region to relax the red traffic light setting, predicting vulnerable people would suffer.
"You have to really question where the public health response is here. It's inconsistent with advice from the [Health] Ministry and epidemiologists. It's a worry."
The Government began the pandemic with "a straight health lens and people-first approach", he said.
"It seems like all of that has fallen off now."
The past two years had made people reflect on what was really important in life, he said.
Iwi Māori had been very proactive about health.
He did not agree that vaccination should be required for some jobs, and said a testing regime could have kept people safe from infection while at work.
But he wouldn't have liked to be in government and making those decisions, and said the fact not many New Zealanders had died meant something went right.
For Ngāti Ruanui leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer the two years had mainly been about Māori working together better and in more innovative ways.
During the first lockdown, she was often on checkpoints and delivering food.
She has plenty of space at home, and also used the lockdown to work in the vegetable garden, read books and talk to people.
"The treadmill in the garage got a lot of use."
Ngarewa-Packer said she and others were finding gaps in the health system and learning from others.
"We started to realise this thing isn't going to go away and we need to be really practical."
She was elected to Parliament and took on advocacy. But the practical work carried on with learning saliva and other testing and providing food and sanitation kits.
There were vaccinated and unvaccinated people in her whānau, and people have been "as inclusive as possible" which heartened her.
Māori had always had a form of mandates - the rahui and tapu in tikanga, she said.
"Mandates could have been done very differently. Communities could have managed things themselves, because we agree on looking after each other."
Whanganui District Health Board member Mary Bennett did each of the two lockdowns with a brother who needed support.
Bennett said, speaking as a whānau member, her concerns were mainly for whānau.
She used the internet to keep in touch with whānau from all over New Zealand and the world.
She also kept fit through joining online groups, and going for a daily walk.
"It was really lovely to be able to say hello to people, albeit from a distance."
Now that the restrictions had eased, she was still very cautious about being with people she didn't know.
During the two years, she felt society slowed down in some ways.
Keith St principal Linda Ireton said going into lockdown in 2020 was a time of uncertainty and something no one had experienced in our lifetime.
"As educators, our first thoughts were how do we support our children to negotiate this really interesting time."
She said they quickly learned how to operate online and digital systems in order to continue teaching.
"The big thing was just taking it one day at a time because it was all so new."
She said staff at Keith St School all had very different experience levels with teaching online before the Covid-19 lockdown.
"It was totally a learning journey.
"It did not take the kids long at all to come to grips with online working. For the teachers, we made sure we gave them the time to learn before we expected them to start doing that with children."
Ireton said the systems learned and put in place during that first lockdown in 2020 had provided a solid foundation over the past two years of life under Covid.
"What we had to reassure our teachers about is this is different learning. It isn't bad learning, it isn't wrong, it is just different."
Carlton School principal Gary Johnston, who was deputy principal at Churton School during the first lockdown, said jumping straight into a lockdown set a path for the way New Zealand would deal with Covid-19.
"What I really liked in the first phase of it was how the community pulled together. The team of five million was a thing then. As we have gone on, it's like anything, you get Covid fatigue."
Johnston said students had dealt with the Covid experience in different ways.
"There is definitely a group I am worried about that has been disadvantaged.
"There are ones who lost that connection and have anxiety and are staying home who haven't engaged. That will be the concern for me out of this.
"The ones we aren't seeing, it is really hard to overcome. Because it is real to them."
Brunswick School principal Jane Corcoran said so much had happened since the first lockdown in 2020.
"I have seen a significant increase in people's adaptability and flexibility, whether that be the staff, the students, or our whānau.
"Advanced technology, alongside teachers' increased fluency on a range of different platforms, has made communication and learning so much more accessible and easy
"We know that each family has its own different reality and it is important that we value and understand their circumstances - not all home learning environments are the same."
Corcoran said a big learning from the first lockdown was that students missed and craved their social interactions with other students and playing sport.
"Covid has opened the door for so many positive changes in education, we have needed to be adaptable, be flexible, think on our feet and with this new ideas and systems are created."
Riders and spectators in Whanganui are anticipating the start of the last race.