National Party Covid-19 Response spokesperson is urging the Government to improve its Covid-19 response despite praising the current elimination strategy.
Chris Bishop said New Zealand and the Government coped well with the pandemic to date, but more there’s still room for improvement on multiple fronts.
Speaking to Breakfast on Thursday from Petone with most of the country back at Alert Level 2 after the recent outbreak of the Delta variant in Auckland, Bishop said New Zealand as a whole is doing well in response to Covid-19.
“I think we’re in a pretty good position but we could be doing better,” Bishop summarised.
“We’ve spent a long time without Covid in New Zealand and that’s a really good thing.
"We’ve got this outbreak that we’ve got to get under control.
“But the regret for me is that over the last year or so, we haven’t scaled up our response to deal with things like Delta – Delta turned up in our MIQ system in April, but we haven’t really made the improvements we should have seen in the last six to nine months to deal with Delta.”
Bishop said examples of a ramped-up response would be the inclusion of rapid antigen testing and saliva testing along with an increased capacity in intensive care units and contact tracing.
“[Rapid antigen testing] has its place,” Bishop said.
“It’s not to be used for diagnostic testing where we have to prove someone has Covid.
"It can be used for example at the border to rapidly test people or in this most latest outbreak when we had to test a large amount of people really quickly, we should’ve been using rapid testing to find as many people as possible with Covid and then follow it up with the PCR test.
“But it’s also got its place for regular testing.”
Bishop added National was trying to “bolster” the Government’s elimination plan.
“Our role is to be constructive and critique where we can and I’ve tried to do that over the last year I’ve held this portfolio.”
“Our strategy in the National Party is to make elimination work – we’ve got an elimination strategy in New Zealand and we need to try and sustain that for as long as we possibly can.”
As such, the roadmap out of the pandemic is difficult but doable, he said.
“The key is vaccination.
“We’ve got to order boosters – frankly, it’s scandalous that we haven’t ordered any booster shots yet for the Pfizer vaccine.
“I’m not being political when I say I think it is scandalous in our vaccine rollout generally and our failure to order booster shots.
“One of the reasons the lockdown this time around has been so long and so harsh has been because of our vaccination rates and that’s not a political comment, that’s based on science.
“We had to do the lockdown, which we fully supported, because we have the second lowest vaccination rates in the developed world.
"It doesn’t give me any pleasure in saying that as the opposition, it’s just the reality.”
Bishop said New Zealand did a “great job” initially responding to the pandemic but have since “rested on our laurels” instead of staying ahead.
“Other countries have gone ahead of us and then Delta turns up and we have to lock down with all the economic and social damages because of low vaccination rates.
“That is a failure on the Government and they have to own that.”
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