The Inquiry into the government’s Covid response is broadly focused and designed to inform future preparedness by examining the past. It leaves the present day “variant soup” environment in something of a no man’s land, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday morning, sign up here.
What’s in and out for the Royal Commission into the government’s Covid response?
As prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday, there will be a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the government’s Covid response. RNZ has a handy explainer. Much of the questioning at yesterday’s post-cabinet press conference centred on what was in and what was out. Broadly the Commission will look into the overall response, including the economic response, to find what could be learned from it. Among other things, particular decisions taken by the Reserve Bank will be excluded. The Commission will be chaired by Australia-based epidemiologist Tony Blakely, former cabinet minister Hekia Parata and former treasury secretary John Whitehead. Blakely has provided plenty of commentary for New Zealand media over the last few years and has been a pragmatic and sometimes blunt voice. In February this year he warned that New Zealand’s approach to Omicron was “overcautious”
Timing protects Inquiry from “blame bombs” during an election year
Epidemiologist Michael Baker welcomed the inquiry. The National party is still calling for an independent economic inquiry, while the Greens view the scope of the Commission of Inquiry as excluding the impact of the government’s economic response on inequality. The Act party questioned the timing. The Inquiry won’t be complete until February 2024. The Herald’s Claire Trevett notes (paywalled) that’s probably a good thing, “insulating it from politics to a certain degree” and “the distraction of politicians mining it for blame bombs to hurl at each other in the heat of an election year.”
The importance of using peacetime to prepare for the future
In the past when I’ve reported on calls for an inquiry into the pandemic, I’ve had the odd bit of feedback asking what good an inquiry would serve now. It’s not an unfair question, given these are retrospective and things could look very different in February 2024. While there will be political ramifications and required accountability, the earnest intent of these inquiries is to learn from the past in order to prepare for the future and prevent harm. Last month, the Harvard Medical Journal spoke with experts about how prepared the world is for whatever comes next. John Connor, associate professor of microbiology at Boston University, said “How you keep in peacetime the things you need in wartime is a tough question to answer, but it seems to me that’s what we need.”
Covid cases may peak week of Christmas
The inquiry will focus on the past to inform the future. Peace-ish time it may be, it still leaves the present and the Covid variant soup we currently find ourselves in something of a no man’s land. As Stuff’s Hannah Martin reports, a lead modeller says as many as one in 20 New Zealanders could have Covid in the week of Christmas, including a “large” proportion who would be asymptomatic. As Newsroom’s Marc Daalder reports, in late July health officials said asymptomatic testing could help to cut Covid transmission but opposed recommending it because it could reduce “the available workforce” if people discovered they had the virus. There were 34,528 Covid infections and 40 Covid-related deaths reported over the past week. As these graphs from RNZ’s Farah Hancock reveal, 27% of cases on Sunday were reinfections.