A vaccination clinic in Toronto. Photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images
A year ago, Justin Giovannetti left Canada to join his fiancée (and The Spinoff) in New Zealand. Today, his home country is confronting another debilitating wave of Covid-19.
In the year since I left Canada I’ve been asked if I miss home. I don’t, and the reason is simple: The home I’d miss doesn’t exist right now. My friends are in lockdown, my family is under curfew, my favourite café is behind plywood. It will come back, but it could take some time.
Canada is in the midst of a third wave of Covid-19 that’s as bad as anything the country has faced before. Fuelled by the rapid spread of highly infectious variants and a lacklustre vaccination programme, the country’s number of daily cases surpassed the US on a per capita basis two weeks ago and has grown worse.
The 49th parallel separating the two North American countries has become a testament to the power of the vaccine. To the south, Americans seem to be slowly returning to normal as every adult in the country is now eligible for a jab. To the north, variants are infecting faster than shots are getting into arms.
When it seemed like there might be light at the end of the tunnel globally in the fight against Covid-19, the health care system in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, went into meltdown last week. ICUs failed to deal with a growing tide of cases. Public health experts hailed as heroes last year are now under police protection. Some of the country’s governments have responded to disaster with orders that have left both experts and the population baffled and angry.
One of the most striking anecdotes I heard this past week was from the city of Calgary, which has about the same population of Auckland. The school board asked the government to require remote learning because so many of its teachers were sick or in isolation that it could no longer staff its schools.
It’s been difficult to speak with friends and family entering their 13th month of working from home and keeping to small bubbles, while simultaneously watching the national situation disintegrate. My father lives alone and is retired, I have absolutely no clue how he’s managed this long other than the recent return of professional ice hockey played in front of cardboard crowds. It was a long and dark winter.
Canada reported more than 10,653 new cases on Monday. In total there’s been about 1.15 million cases of Covid-19 and 23,763 deaths — both numbers are growing steadily by the day.
The country’s first wave peaked last May at about a quarter of today’s totals — that’s when New Zealand was in level four lockdown. The second wave around Christmas was about as bad as today, before declining rapidly as strict public health measures took effect. Those controls were relaxed in early March despite repeated warnings of public health experts that disaster would ensue. In less than a month, the third wave slammed home.
To get a better sense of how this happened, I spoke with public policy expert Heidi Tworek from the University of British Columbia. Like many around the world she’s watched press conferences from prime minister Jacinda Ardern and sighed at the level of clarity in New Zealand’s response.
Part of the recent surge in cases as stemmed from the way Canada is governed, she pointed out. The country is divided into 10 powerful provinces. Health care falls within the provincial area of responsibility, meaning the country has had 10 different responses to Covid-19. Some have been strikingly more effective than others.
Constitutionally, prime minister Justin Trudeau’s main job has been to write cheques to provincial leaders and buy vaccines from overseas. He’s succeeded at the first task, with the budget still at second-world-war-levels of deficit for a second year. On the second, delays, missteps and changing science has led to bickering and recrimination between Trudeau and conservative provincial leaders.
“It’s always hard to give you one sense of how Canada’s doing, every province is doing its own thing. That’s one of the tales of Canada. It’s like an experiment in one country, where the Atlantic provinces have a travel bubble and are trying a covid-zero strategy, while Ontario is standing out now for pursuing some policies that aren’t based on the science of how Covid spreads,” said Tworek.
Heidi Tworek
It’s hard to overstate the lack of a national response. There are multiple Covid-19 apps that don’t work in different areas, as well as different definitions and terms for restrictions in each province. From afar it’s a bewildering assortment of colour codes, levels and recommendations from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The biggest factor behind this third wave, according to Tworek, is an inability on the part of politicians to look at Europe earlier this year and understand that the variants they were seeing there was Canada’s future. In some ways it echoed the start of the pandemic: The variants were overseas, then a few cases arrived, then outbreaks followed and finally governments reacted.
One of the relative successes of the first year of Covid-19 was British Columbia, where cases were kept low and the provincial government followed the science. Provincial health officer Bonnie Henry became a daily face on TV screens in Vancouver as politicians took a back seat. She became a mixture of Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield, with both the clear advice and the kindness.
“In BC you have an admired chief medical officer and a real success story, but since November onwards it’s been a different story. Henry had looked back at the first wave and said she wished she’d acted sooner. We’re in a third wave and we now see a cascade of choices that are being made that should have probably been made a while ago,” Tworek explained.
Earlier this year there were several large outbreaks in mountain resort towns populated by young Australians. It’s likely that more Australians had Covid-19 in Canada earlier this year than in Australia.
However, it’s the country’s richest and largest province, Ontario, that has seen its fortunes fall apart most quickly. Much of it is being blamed on premier Doug Ford, a conservative with a populist streak that some have compared to Donald Trump. After seeing his popularity shoot up last year, Ford is now facing calls for his resignation.
After relaxing restrictions a month ago despite public warnings from his chief public health officer, Ford then responded to a surge in cases by shutting playgrounds and ordering police to conduct random spot checks. He didn’t order a lockdown or a closure of nonessential businesses. After a weekend of outrage, including police who said they wouldn’t follow the order, Ford backtracked.
“It’s an extraordinary story that a year into a pandemic you’ve got a leader who isn’t following what experts are telling him what to do. There’s still no paid sick leave and no real attention being paid to warehouses and other businesses that have seen cases,” said Tworek.
The country has now placed its hopes on a rush of new vaccine deliveries in the next few months. There could be good news ahead. My parents and many former colleagues have received their first jab in recent days. Every morning I open up Instagram to pictures of beaming masked faces and thumbs up. There’s no lack of people willing to roll up their sleeves.
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for April 22, bringing you the latest news updated throughout the day. Get in touch at stewart@thespinoff.co.nz
3.40pm: Australian PM set to visit NZ ‘in two weeks’
It’s been confirmed that Australian PM Scott Morrison will make his way across the Tasman – but the official details are being kept under wraps.
Australian foreign minister Marise Payne is in the country at the moment for a biannual meeting with her counterpart Nanaia Mahuta. It’s the first official visit to New Zealand by an Australian government rep since border restrictions were imposed over a year ago.
The details of Payne and Mahuta’s meeting today remains vague, with a press release giving the ambiguous explanation that the duo “discussed the importance of promoting our shared interests in an open, resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific”.
A new episode of Remember When…
In the latest episode of Remember When…we’re looking back on the nice, different, unusual TV masterpiece Kath & Kim for Australia Week. Join The Spinoff’s Jane Yee, Josie Adams and Lucy Reymer as they reminisce about a show that, as I’ve discovered this week, holds up surprisingly well.
“After the corrections are applied, all nine key measures of child poverty remain trending downwards across the two years since the year ended June 2018,” work, wealth, and wellbeing statistics senior manager Sean Broughton said.
Overall, the differences are slight but still noticeable – there are minor improvements and declines across the figures. For example, the original statistics showed the percentage of children living in material hardship at 11% – the updated figure is 11.3%.
Despite that 0.3% difference, it still represents a 1.9% improvement than from the previous June’s statistics.
Children’s commissioner Andrew Becroft has welcomed the updated statistics, saying reliable numbers are “vital” when working towards child poverty reduction.
“A different number behind a decimal point doesn’t change things for the thousands of tamariki and whānau doing it tough. Children who are growing up in a motel, or whose families are struggling to pay for the basics, still need big bold changes to unlock opportunities to live their best lives,” he said.
1.10pm: More close contacts of Covid-positive airport worker discovered
The number of close contacts of a border worker who tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday has now increased to 31.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said this is because the person worked three shifts during their infectious period alongside “a number of colleagues”. Public health officials have now identified 22 colleagues as close contacts, up from 17 yesterday.
Of the 31 close contacts, 14 have returned negative test results to date – meaning an additional 17 are yet to test negative.
“All close contacts are being communicated with and asked to self-isolate, monitor symptoms and undergo required testing,” said a ministry spokesperson.
Meanwhile, there are no new cases in the community to report today. There are three new positive cases of Covid-19 to report in managed isolation. The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is one.
Four previously reported cases have now recovered, bringing the total number of active cases in New Zealand to 80.
Two previously reported cases have been reclassified as not cases. “One of these is now deemed historic and considered not infectious. The other case is also deemed historic and was recorded in the person’s country of origin so is not added to New Zealand’s count,” the ministry said.
The Real Pod: Shirley you can’t be serious
In this week’s episode of The Real Pod, Alex Casey and Jane Yee hatch a plan to infiltrate the amazing-sounding Christchurch Shirley Club and recap a week of girls on the outside, girls with glam sides and girls with kaleidoscope eyes on Married at First Sight Australia.
12.15pm: Blood donor study reveals unreported Covid-19 cases in NZ
Blood from almost 10,000 donors has revealed eight previously unreported cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand.
Collected in December and early January, the blood was tested for Covid-19 antibodies – detecting 18 cases of the virus. Six of these were previously known and four had travelled abroad, but the remaining eight were “unexplained”.
Study author Nikki Moreland of the University of Auckland said the results, while a surprise, were encouraging.
“It does support the evidence from other data sources such as community testing, which have consistently shown low rates of positive tests,” she said.
“So far there’s been no indication that Aotearoa New Zealand has experienced large undetected outbreaks in the community.”
11.55am: PM teases India flight ban to be lifted
The prime minister has teased that the ban on flights from India may soon be lifted.
An announcement is set to be made tomorrow by Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins, around a fortnight after the ban was first implemented.
Speaking to media this morning, Jacinda Ardern said an extension to the ban had not been part of the government’s thinking when it was first announced, at least when it came to New Zealand citizens. “If a New Zealander is abroad, the only legal place they are able to reside is New Zealand so we need to be able to enable them to do that,” she said.
Ardern said the ban was always intended to be temporary. “For citizens it would need to be temporary… we can’t deem our citizens stateless,” she said.
Pushed for further details, Ardern said all would be revealed tomorrow. I’ll be at the announcement live.
11.20am: School children tailed by private investigators after climate strike – report
There’s been an extraordinary and slightly unbelievable follow-up to a report I flagged in the live updates earlier this week. Investigate reporter Nicky Hager has been digging into private investigation firm Thompson and Clark, in a series of stories for RNZ.
Today, he’s revealed that school children linked to the School Strike 4 Climate group were followed by private investigators hired by clients from the oil and gas industry.
Hager’s investigation revealed that a major focus of Thompson and Clark in 2019 and 2020 was monitoring and helping to counter citizen groups concerned about climate change – including high schoolers.
The company’s most notable client related to climate change is OMV, New Zealand’s largest oil producer, who hired Thompson and Clark on a number of occasions.
10.30am: Janssen vaccine set to carry blood clot warning
Science journalist and Spinoff contributing writer Mirjam Guesgen explains:
The body charged with evaluating medicines in Europe, the European Medicines Agency, has concluded that a warning about blood clots should be added to the Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] Covid-19 vaccine product information. The likelihood of developing an unusual clot after receiving the shot is a very rare side effect, they stated in a press release.
The decision comes after eight people in the US developed serious clotting after being vaccinated. One person died.
The clots from the Janssen vaccine fit the tell-tale picture of post-vaccination clotting, described in an explainer I wrote this week. They were found in unusual places in the body – the brain, abdomen and arteries – and people who developed the clots also had low blood platelet levels. Platelets are the cells that prevent a clot from bleeding.
The clots were similar to those that people developed after getting the AstraZeneca vaccine, which the European agency also recently recommended come with a warning.
The European Medicines Agency’s decision could influence New Zealand’s medicine regulator, MedSafe, as they decide whether or not to approve the Janssen vaccine for use here. A decision from MedSafe is expected within the next week.
New Zealand is currently rolling out the Pfizer vaccine, which hasn’t been linked to clotting.
10.00am: NZ bank deposits to be covered by new insurance scheme
Political editor Justin Giovannetti writes from parliament about a very belated move to protect your money that’s about 90 years late.
A missing part of New Zealand’s social safety net is finally being added as finance minister Grant Robertson has unveiled plans to implement deposit insurance within two years.
New Zealand has been a global outlier as one of only two rich countries that doesn’t have a programme that protects bank deposits—the other is Israel. Nearly every other country with a banking system guarantees deposits, an idea that was born in the dark days of the Great Depression.
If your bank were to fail in New Zealand today, your money would be lost. That’s set to change. Banks, credit unions and other finance companies will soon be required to protect the first $100,000 someone deposits in their accounts through an insurance system. About 93% of money deposited in banks will be protected by the scheme.
The new programme will add an additional cost to banks at a time when Westpac has cited increasing regulation as a reason for looking to sell its New Zealand operation.
The Reserve Bank had argued against the change, stating that banks kept enough money in reserve to cover contingencies. That ignores recent history where the government was forced to create an emergency deposit scheme for four years during and after the global financial crisis where the public took on the responsibility for covering deposits in failing financial institutions.
“The recommendations will considerably strengthen New Zealand’s financial system safety net and contribute to a robust framework of protections for depositors. It also brings our protections into line with those in place overseas,” Robertson said in a statement.
As part of the new package of rules, cabinet will also look at giving the Reserve Bank more power to set wider lending restrictions, including loan-to-value ratios. Something that has so far been restricted to mortgages.
8.40am: All aboard for Air New Zealand’s first flight to Hobart in 23 years
On Monday, I was stationed at Auckland Airport watching happy travellers arrive and depart the country as the trans-Tasman bubble launched. It crossed my mind: where’s my media junket to Australia!?
Here’s The Spinoff’s deputy editor Catherine McGregor, reporting as she boards Air New Zealand’s first flight to Hobart in 23 years.
Last night my colleague Alice messaged me a friendly warning: “Don’t forget your passport!” And then, “Haven’t been able to say that for a while.” It was a reminder of how travel – a once relatively everyday activity – has developed a talismanic quality over the past year: when we can travel freely overseas, we’ll know Covid is at long last over. While of course people have been flying out of the country since the pandemic began, this week marks the return of international travel for leisure, and the beginning of the end of Fortress New Zealand. Today I’m off to Tasmania, on board Air New Zealand’s first direct flight to Hobart since 1998. Almost incredibly, I’m staying only four days, and will sleep in my own bed on the night I return.
That doesn’t mean things are entirely back to normal, however. Before you board a flight to Australia there are a few extra hoops to jump through, including an online federal Australian Travel Declaration to fill out alongside a state-specific Covid safety form. And of course, you’ll need your mask, even after you disembark: unlike New Zealand, masks in Australian airports are mandatory, not simply “encouraged”.
In celebration of this inaugural Tasmania flight – and the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble – Air New Zealand is pulling out all the stops, treating my group of media and a smattering of travel agents to bubbles and bite-sized breakfasts before departure. It’s always exciting to set off on an international flight, but today the elation is palpable. One travel agent I spoke to said the bookings to Australia are starting to roll in – primarily for the Gold Coast at this stage, but she expects a lot of New Zealanders to book self-drive holidays for the spring. With the rest of the world still closed off to us, 2021 will be an opportunity to take that major Australia trip people have long considered but always put off. It’s still a long way from life as the travel industry knew it, but they’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel, for sure.
And yes, I remembered my passport.
All aboard! (Photo / Catherine McGregor)
8.05am: ‘Unexpected’ Covid-19 fragments found in Melbourne wastewater
Melbourne is on high alert after “unexpected” Covid-19 fragments were found in wastewater.
It’s one of several Covid-related scares in the days since the trans-Tasman bubble launched on Monday: earlier this week, an Auckland Airport worker tested positive for the virus while health officials in New South Wales are investigating possible spread within a managed isolation hotel.
Addressing the possibility of new cases in Melbourne, the health department said: “The unexpected [wastewater] detections may be due to a person or persons with Covid-19 being in the early active infectious phase or it could be because they are continuing to shed the virus after the infectious period.
“While it is possible that these detections are due to a visitor or visitors to these areas who are not infectious, a cautious approach is being taken.”
7.30am: Top stories from The Bulletin
So, the headline figures: Inflation is up 0.8% for the quarter, and 1.5% for the year overall, reports the NZ Herald. Inflation is basically a measure of how much the price of stuff has changed over a period of time. Within that, there was an interesting bit of movement for petrol prices, which are way up over the quarter, but down over the year, reflecting the crash in demand that came during the biggest months of the pandemic. The price of building a house, and the cost of rent, has also gone up ahead of the wider trends.
And that’s part of the wider issue around inflation right now – it is hitting harder for people with less ability to pay for increased costs of living. The Council of Trade Unions put out an analysis of the wider figures, noting that big rises for essentials like groceries and early childhood education are being offset in the headline figures by falls in the prices of more discretionary spending, like on consumer electronics. “Today’s data supports other recent economic data – be it on unemployment, wage growth, or housing – that shows we have an uneven recovery from the economic impact of COVID-19,” said CTU economist Craig Renney.
Will these figures prompt any changes in approach from the Reserve Bank? Part of the central bank’s remit is to keep inflation within target levels of 1-3%. Radio NZ quoted ASB senior economist Mark Smith, who expects inflation to start rising more quickly from here. “We expect annual headline inflation to move above 2 percent for much of the rest of this year and next as a perfect storm of stretched capacity, supply bottlenecks, and higher costs flow through in consumer prices.” Having said that, he didn’t expect the RBNZ’s approach to change, because they’re also directed to maximise employment levels, and low interest rates tend to support that.
Sweeping reforms to the structure of the health system were announced yesterday, including an end to DHBs altogether. I’ve gone over the major parts of the announcement in this cheat sheet to get you up to speed. We’ve also collected the views of a range of people with a connection to the health system, to get more of an insider perspective. And finally, health policy expert Gabrielle Baker takes a give and take approach to the news that a Māori Health Authority will be established.
