An early proponent of New Zealand’s elimination strategy has now admitted that the approach means the country cannot go back to normal.
In early interviews, Siouxsie Wiles claimed to be “excited” about vaccines for COVID-19, but now says the early ones are unlikely to prevent death or transmission (see BMJ assessment of lead vaccines).
Wiles says this is particularly problematic for New Zealand because it “stamped out” COVID-19. A partially effective vaccine would not allow us to open borders and go back to normal (we presume she means that COVID-19 would re-enter the country and/or resume transmission). Wiles has therefore clarified that it is New Zealand’s strategy which means New Zealand can not go back to normal.
This will be surprising and unpleasant news to most citizens. Wiles embraced the strategy and the government’s plan to eliminate and wait for a vaccine.
This is precisely the dilemma that Covid Plan B predicted would happen, and why we opposed the elimination and lockdown strategy.
We said that if elimination was the goal, our quandary was that we could not have a situation where COVID-19 was in transmission. Which meant we had to wait until a totally effective vaccine was available. We doubted that such a vaccine would be ready even in 2021.
In her Stuff article, Wiles seems to be happy with the idea that this isolation is the new normal. We are not.
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