| Comment | And NZ had those issues too, with regular outbreaks caused by inbound travel. NZ did not close itself off from the world, its border was also porous, and it had regular novel cases of community transmission. The difference was that in every one of those cases it immediately took an elimination position. So it's not about preventing any cases entering the country ever - NZ never achieved that - it's about the response to community transmission when its detected.
We're also an island nation, with what has been enacted over Brexit clearly showing we can enact strict border controls if we need to, and given that Ireland was ahead of us in identifying an elimination strategy I'm pretty sure a joint Common Area approach would have been possible. But again, that's not the important bit - elimination is about recognising you can't stop cases entering your country, and what your response is when they do.
In our case, even if you take the stance that the first wave was unavoidable due to it being endemic, we had the opportunity to implement an elimination strategy prior to the second wave: https://www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20200717-A-Better-Way-To-Go.pdf
NZ also had a second wave, just like us. Compare the responses.
You're right, though, there is an important distinction to be made between the UK and NZ - and most of it was made clear yesterday. |
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