
100 days without Covid-19: how New Zealand got rid of a virus - coltnz
https://theconversation.com/100-days-without-covid-19-how-new-zealand-got-rid-of-a-virus-that-keeps-spreading-across-the-world-143672
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dwd
Good to see someone acknowledge the Australian states individually for their
efforts.

Queensland (where I am) by the numbers is roughly the same population as NZ
and has managed to keep cases and fatalities to a fraction. With the border
closing again this weekend the state government is again not bowing to
pressure from the other states or the Australian government to keep the border
open so we can stay open locally.

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coltnz
With the decent levels of tracing and reporting, absence of misaligned
incentives and lack of politicising, I think there's probably some good data
in the NZ experience, in terms of actual mortality rate, cohort risk and level
of complications.

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xupybd
We seem to have people travelling overseas and testing positive at their
destination. I'm not convinced we have gotten rid of it just yet.

~~~
gnat
There's non-trivial community testing that hasn't found people with Covid-19
in NZ. So either (a) every case in NZ is asymptomatic, (b) there are only a
few cases that somehow defy the exponential growth we saw at the start of
lockdown, or (c) there are no cases in NZ. I find the lowest probability
explanation to be that there are no cases in NZ.

So what about the three cases of travellers testing positive overseas? The one
in South Korea went via Singapore and it's hypothesized that the traveller
caught Covid-19 there. There has been testing of the places in NZ where the
traveller went before they left (e.g., Queenstown and Milford), so far with no
positives found. One tested positive in Australia but was never "in" New
Zealand -- her flight was LA-Auckland-Sydney. And in the final case, the woman
had been ill in March after returning from overseas and it's thought she
hasn't been infectious. They've all been contact-traced and testing came back
negative.

~~~
gnat
See also: [https://sciblogs.co.nz/infectious-
thoughts/2020/08/01/four-p...](https://sciblogs.co.nz/infectious-
thoughts/2020/08/01/four-possible-scenarios-for-the-australian-and-south-
korean-travellers/)

