Covid 19 coronavirus: Editorial - complaint must be tempered with compliance

Editorial

EDITORIAL

It is human nature to bristle at enforced restrictions.

Few would have taken raised alert levels, following confirmed positive cases of Covid-19 in the Auckland community this week, contentedly. Similarly, the news of three further cases yesterday from Minister for Covid Response Chris Hipkins would have been met with much disappointment and frustration.

The so-called Valentine's outbreak - having been announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at 7pm on Sunday, February 14 - was a mood-kill for a region that had just sailed through the long weekends of Waitangi Day and Auckland Anniversary.

Auckland's Covid alert level 3 status dropped to level 2 overnight but some have questioned the need to put the entire city of Auckland into level 3 lockdown given there were known locations of interest in other parts of the North Island.

And why lock down everyone south of Mangawhai, for instance, when there has been no confirmed positive case or location of interest further north than Nicholson Ave in Papatoetoe?

The concern here is that not only the source of the contamination was unknown but we also do not yet know who is the earliest of the known positive cases.

As Covid-19 modeller Professor Shaun Hendy says, it would be helpful to know whether the two cases revealed yesterday were "downstream cases" who caught the virus from the earlier known cases - or whether they were "upstream" - and the original source.

"If it is the latter then this could be the sign of a significant cluster. If it's the former there is still a good chance the cluster is contained."

Minister Hipkins and director general of health Ashley Bloomfield are working with the best advice science can provide and will be under no illusions of how extended restrictions will be viewed by a frustrated public. They also know what is at stake.

It is, after all, the first community discovery of the UK variant B.1.1.7 - believed to be more deadly than previous variants for all age groups, genders and ethnicities.

Some experts contend this version of the virus simply spreads faster and wider, thus infecting more people at risk of needing hospital treatment - but as we reminded readers yesterday, regardless, the tragic outcome of B.1.1.7 transmission is dire indeed.

Speculation and voicing concerns are natural, and should be encouraged - but in a reasoned and informed manner.

However, there is simply too much we do not know to have any confidence in predicting what happens next. Until we have further results from testing, and have passed the time for infected people to become symptomatic, we will have to wait at level 2.

There is a good chance the Valentine's contamination is a closed group of cases but we would be giving ourselves no chance at all by breaching compliance and throwing caution - and all we have gained before - to the wind.