New Zealand should shift to a Covid-19 containment strategy, rather than focusing on elimination, says Whanau Ora chief executive John Tamihere.
The Health Select Committee reconvenes on Wednesday which is where Mr Tamihere - who's also the Māori Party co-leader - will address the matter.
Mr Tamihere says it would be “cheaper” to opt for a containment strategy, and will be calling for more support for New Zealand’s vulnerable communities - including the elderly and Māori and Pasifika communities.
He says there are a lot of “positive” things going for New Zealand for it to pivot to a strategy that is “not as harsh a tool as lockdown”.
That strategy is now possible, he says, because New Zealand has tightened up its border, there is better personal protective equipment available and community knowledge about looking after one another and hygiene has been upgraded.
“The biggest question that we’d want answered is - there must be modelling done on shifting possibly from elimination to containment," Mr Tamihere says.
“If you’re looking to pivot to a new type of strategy to manage Covid, it would be cheaper to start to wrap around those that are in difficulty as opposed to taking a glad wrap approach across all communities when 80 per cent are going to be able to trade through.”
He says lockdowns are “quite brutal on a whole range of levels”.
“We’ve got a lot of positive things going for us in terms of looking at either pivoting to a not as harsh a tool as lockdown.”
The Select Committee will reconvene this week, after calls from National and NZ First to be able to critique the Government's Covid-19 response.
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