Gosh, New Zealand isn’t absolutely perfect
“Others, while supportive of the restrictions, have criticised New Zealand’s general health preparedness, highlighting the country’s extremely low intensive care capacity. The number of ICU beds per 100,000 people was 5.14 in New Zealand, compared to 8.92 in Australia and 12.5 in Italy.
The low ICU capacity perhaps bolstered the government’s case for swift action, lest the nation’s hospitals be overrun.
Yet because of this, New Zealand’s entire public health system has come under fire. The system is highly devolved, with power largely ceded to 20 elected District Health Boards.
As the crisis wore on, these health districts - and the government - copped flak for not knowing how many ventilators they had and mismanaging the distribution of crucial PPE to frontline health workers, among other problems.
The problem became so acute, the Auditor-General was hauled in to investigate.
And that was before the largely invisible Health Minister David Clark was demoted by Ardern after admitting he took his family to the beach during the lockdown.
Then on Monday the government quietly released a report slamming its early contact tracing efforts. The report found a system so threadbare that it became overloaded by fewer than 100 daily cases in the early days of the pandemic. "The timeliness of the process was poor," the report said, detailing a two-day average lag between a positive COVID-19 test and contacts being told to self-isolate.
Politically, none of this is helped by the fact that Australia seems to have tackled COVID-19 just as well as New Zealand without closing down every Bunnings, McDonald’s drive-through and takeaway coffee cart in the country.
Even at the slightly more relaxed level three lockdown - which will start on Tuesday - hairdressers will still be closed as will normal shopping. Businesses can open, but transactions must be contactless, this means online ordering and pick up or deliveries. The cash will be a lifeline for some small businesses, but for many it will be too little, too late.”