Tim Dower: What's the plan for the next Covid 19 coronavirus outbreak?

Opinion

COMMENT

So here's a tricky question: what are we going to do if there's another Covid-19 flare-up?

Listening to what people have been saying about the latest Auckland lockdown - and seeing how swiftly things are getting moving again - I suspect there's not much appetite for another one.

Problem is, and we know this from the ongoing frailty of the border controls, it'll only be a matter of time before we have another Covid flare-up.

The virus wasn't lurking out of sight for all that time, it's just not possible.

Community transmission would have been rampant during the first "go hard, go early" phase.

But it wasn't. Yet the virus still snuck through.

And if that can happen once, it can happen again, even if we have plugged all the leaks in the system.

The Government needs to be thinking about this now. Before it happens.

Mobile testing stations could discover a fresh case of infection. What then? Photo / Paul Taylor, file

Not just because we can't afford to go backwards again but because people are getting restless and grumpy.

And there's a real danger the public will resist, if not outright defy, another lockdown call.

Especially people outside the affected areas.

Why should the South Island be suffering? There's no virus there.

Why should Northland be effectively cut off from the rest of the country? No virus there, either.

The Government isn't stupid. I suspect it senses it's looking fragile and vulnerable on this.

People turned out in droves to be tested last time, partly due to a wrong message from the Ministry of Health. Photo / Alex Burton

It's political now, it knows that, and that's probably why it didn't dare push the restrictions out a few more days, although I'll bet it wanted to.

What we need now is something less than the blunt instrument which has whacked every one of us around the head.

People have had enough.

We need to be more targeted.

What's needed is a plan.