NZ Covid effort saved many lives

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Those who question the worth of what this nation did to combat Covid-19 should reflect on the death toll in other countries.

A comparison using this week’s World Health Organisation (WHO) figures is a stark pointer to the success of what was done here.

Readers may remember Sweden’s health minister had a policy of relying on natural immunity, and so immunisation did not get going until it was realised that policy was proving deadly.

Sweden has a population of 10.5 million, or just over double that of New Zealand.

They have had 23,918 deaths — here WHO data shows there have been 2716 Covid-related deaths.

The Swedish death rate per head of population is 0.22 percent — New Zealand’s is 0.05 percent, or over four times lower.

Brazil at the moment is suffering badly from Covid — it has had over 700,000 Covid-related deaths. For a population of just over 214 million, that is equivalent to a per-head-of-population rate of 0.327 percent — or a death rate of six and a half times that of New Zealand.

Canada, with a population of 38.2 million, has had 50,000 Covid-related deaths.

This is more than twice

New Zealand’s Covid mortality rate.

From this, it surely must be concluded that whatever some may think of the Kiwi effort to contain Covid, it HAS saved lives and avoided the heartbreak of many more families losing loved ones.

Roger Handford