The broad political and public consensus on eliminating Covid-19 has shown signs of wavering this week as Auckland stares down its longest ever stretch in hard lockdown.
Authorities are confident level four has stamped out "widespread" community transmission, but three clusters are stillgrowing and several mystery cases remain unexplained.
ACT leader David Seymour yesterday suggested New Zealand should abandon its elimination strategy if the situation doesn't improve this week.
RNZ spoke to a range of politicians, scientists, modellers, and officials and asked: is it time to double-down or change tack?
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
"If we can't get this outbreak under control with four weeks of level four, are we certain it'll be under control after five? And if we can't get it under control after five weeks, are we gonna go to six? People will go broke in the meantime.
"The alternative is a holding pattern - a kind of level 2 or 3 that allows businesses to operate somewhat sustainably - while we wait for vaccination rates to be high enough to abandon lockdowns."
Siouxsie Wiles Microbiologist, University of Auckland associate professor in Molecular Medicine and Pathology
"We just need to mop up these little transmission chains and then we can get back down the Alert Levels.
"This is really hard, but ... just look at New South Wales. That is the alternative. Hospitals full of patients and lots of people really sick and dying."
Photo / RNZ Vinay Ranchhod
Graham Le Gros Immunologist, Malaghan Institute of Medical Research director and Vaccine Alliance programme director
"This is only one event that got across the border and look at the mayhem - one month lockdown, a billion dollars a week - that's just not sustainable in the long term...
"The lockdown is working. The testing is at a good level, people are doing what's asked of them, and it's really only a small number of cases that we are investigating very thoroughly just to make sure there is no ongoing community transmission.
"Our view and our advice is that another week in lockdown in alert level 4 in Auckland gives us our best chance to really finish the job off here."
