The Medical Director of the Royal College of GPS says Covid-19 will likely stay around in New Zealand for at least a year longer, even with vaccinations taking place, and stressed that our main protection is still stopping it at the border.
Dr Bryan Betty, a former deputy director of Pharmac, said that, in the wake of three new community cases being confirmed this week, it was "inevitable that at some point we do get breaches across the border".
"I think what's really important at this point is to establish what exactly is going on with these cases with further testing," Betty said.
"If in fact they have come from the Pullman Hotel, there needs to be some pretty detailed analysis as to whats gone on, why it's gone on and we need to stop it happening in future - we need to learn from what's going on here."
Betty while a vaccine is coming, New Zealand's main defence is our managed isolation facilities, and we need to keep them as strong as possible.
"We need to be aware that the vaccine is part of the strategy - I think Covid is with us for the next twelve months, or over - as we start to roll out the vaccine," he said.
"While that's happening, and even if there are disruptions to the vaccine supply, our main protection is the border - we need to stop Covid entering the country.
"We need to keep looking at what's going on - if there are breaches, finding out why it's happening and stop it happening again.
"It is absolutely critical that's what goes on."
Betty said that while he hoped there wouldn't be delays to New Zealand getting its vaccine doses, "but realistically, the way things are structured I think we've got a number of issues.
"Firstly, there is a huge global demand for vaccine - so there's competition.
"Secondly, as we've seen with the Astra Zenica vaccine, there are manufacturing problems that can occur - and we see this all the time with medication
"The third thing is, we're at the bottom of a very long global supply chain and as we saw with the flu vaccine last year there can be disruption in getting vaccine to New Zealand.
"We need to be prepared for the fact there could be delays to the vaccine rollout."
He also said that some "issues" around the vaccines remained - especially how effective they were, and their effects on older people.
"We're not sure how long the vaccines actually last for - so will this be a yearly programme that we need, or two-yearly? That will become obvious in the next two months," Betty said.
In terms of efficacy, Betty said a "hidden" aspect as that the vaccines may prevent people from getting seriously ill from Covid, but it's not yet known if it totally prevents them from catching and transmitting it.
"We've kicked over these vaccines in the space of nine months - normally it takes two to three years to roll out a vaccine programme. Sometimes being first is not necessarily the best and we need to be very careful about that."
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