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msconductLast time I wrote about Covid here, Auckland was in lockdown as we chased the tail of the Delta outbreak. We fought, but we lost. Despite the insane infectiousness of Delta, we could have beaten it, but our luck which has saved us several times before ran out. The infection got into Auckland's criminal class, a group of people who are completely uninterested in observing quarantine protocols as it interferes with drug dealing.
So now we've switched our focus from elimination to suppression. This was always our plan, we've just had to implement it earlier than we wanted to. In a way, that isn't that bad. We always knew we had to open up and therefore accept some cases at some point, but giving up our zero Covid status voluntarily would have been psychologically very, very difficult. This way, we have no option, and that's a lot easier to accept.
It doesn't come without a price, of course. The reason New Zealand stuck to a zero Covid strategy for so long isn't just because it was lovely living an almost-normal life for most of the time since the beginning of the pandemic. It was because New Zealand has the second-lowest number of ICU beds per population in the OECD. We absolutely could not have afforded an uncontrolled outbreak of the type we saw in New York.
What's more, for reasons that remain not fully explained, our vaccine rollout here was very slow. So when Delta hit, even though we gave up trying to eliminate it, Auckland has still had to be in a lengthy, strict and expensive lockdown, both to keep our case numbers down and to increase the vaccination levels.
So far, we've done pretty well at both. Cases currently average around the 200 per day mark and aren't increasing exponentially as we feared they might. As for the vaccination side of it, we might have started off slowly, but numbers have rocketed up. At the start of the Delta outbreak in August, the percentage double-vaxxed of the eligible New Zealand population (ie over 12, we're not jabbing the little kids yet) was 32%. Three months later, it's 82%. In Auckland, we've done even better with 90% eligible double-vaxxed. In my suburb, it's more than 92%.
The high vaccination rate is going to help, as is the fact that our booster rollout is about to start and it's available to everyone. Our relentless testing and case tracing efforts continue, and soon some heavy-duty vaccine mandates come into effect. We're not going into this the way people were in the rest of the world last year with no protection at all. What's more, we're not burnt out and exhausted by Covid like so many people overseas who've had to live with it since last year. For most of us, most of the time Covid has barely crossed our horizons, so we have psychological reserves other countries don't.
However, it could go any way from here. The numbers coming in from overseas, even from highly vaxxed countries, are terrifying. Here, even with the lockdown Delta has started to leak out to other areas of the North Island. And in mid-December the border that's cut Auckland off from the rest of the country since August will be lifted. This is for the vaccinated only, but there's no doubt the virus is going to spread more widely as a result. We could keep the numbers manageable, or it could be a complete disaster. Time will tell, but at the moment it feels like we're standing on the edge of a precipice.
So now we've switched our focus from elimination to suppression. This was always our plan, we've just had to implement it earlier than we wanted to. In a way, that isn't that bad. We always knew we had to open up and therefore accept some cases at some point, but giving up our zero Covid status voluntarily would have been psychologically very, very difficult. This way, we have no option, and that's a lot easier to accept.
It doesn't come without a price, of course. The reason New Zealand stuck to a zero Covid strategy for so long isn't just because it was lovely living an almost-normal life for most of the time since the beginning of the pandemic. It was because New Zealand has the second-lowest number of ICU beds per population in the OECD. We absolutely could not have afforded an uncontrolled outbreak of the type we saw in New York.
What's more, for reasons that remain not fully explained, our vaccine rollout here was very slow. So when Delta hit, even though we gave up trying to eliminate it, Auckland has still had to be in a lengthy, strict and expensive lockdown, both to keep our case numbers down and to increase the vaccination levels.
So far, we've done pretty well at both. Cases currently average around the 200 per day mark and aren't increasing exponentially as we feared they might. As for the vaccination side of it, we might have started off slowly, but numbers have rocketed up. At the start of the Delta outbreak in August, the percentage double-vaxxed of the eligible New Zealand population (ie over 12, we're not jabbing the little kids yet) was 32%. Three months later, it's 82%. In Auckland, we've done even better with 90% eligible double-vaxxed. In my suburb, it's more than 92%.
The high vaccination rate is going to help, as is the fact that our booster rollout is about to start and it's available to everyone. Our relentless testing and case tracing efforts continue, and soon some heavy-duty vaccine mandates come into effect. We're not going into this the way people were in the rest of the world last year with no protection at all. What's more, we're not burnt out and exhausted by Covid like so many people overseas who've had to live with it since last year. For most of us, most of the time Covid has barely crossed our horizons, so we have psychological reserves other countries don't.
However, it could go any way from here. The numbers coming in from overseas, even from highly vaxxed countries, are terrifying. Here, even with the lockdown Delta has started to leak out to other areas of the North Island. And in mid-December the border that's cut Auckland off from the rest of the country since August will be lifted. This is for the vaccinated only, but there's no doubt the virus is going to spread more widely as a result. We could keep the numbers manageable, or it could be a complete disaster. Time will tell, but at the moment it feels like we're standing on the edge of a precipice.
