Coronavirus
Coronavirus finally made its way to New Zealand. We had our first confirmed case last Friday from a permanent resident who came back from Iran on an Emirates flight via Bali. The infected person is in an isolation room in Auckland Hospital and apparently improving. While no one is surprised that the virus made its way here, I think a lot of people were holding out hope that New Zealand’s distance from just about everything would provide enough of a barrier. Now people are concerned that this winter will be terrifying as this new virus takes hold just as the weather gets cooler. Here’s a timeline of what’s happening in New Zealand with respect to coronavirus:
January 25 - Schools begin to send out notices requesting students who have been back in China over the holidays - especially those who went back for the Chinese New Year - to self-quarantine for two weeks before coming back to class. A petition was circulated around one of my kid’s schools by the Chinese community. At first I thought this petition was going to protest against the self-quarantine request, but in fact, it wanted the wording of the self-quarantine guidelines to be stricter and not voluntary. This is when I learned that the Chinese community has a more acute fear of Covid-19 caused by their previous experiences with SARS. They were not messing around.
February 2 - Travel ban on individuals who have been in mainland China within the past 14 days instituted. There is a push from Chinese students and some education entities to make an exception for students travelling back from China to study. That push has so far been denied.
February 10 - New Zealand stopped sending packages to China and there is a long hold up at customs to receive packages from China. Some packages are being sterilised upon entry.
February 19 - A dedicated Covid-19 Healthline number campaign starts. The slogan “Stay at home and use the phone” urges people not to walk into their doctor’s office or hospital without first calling and registering their details. FYI, the number is 0800 358 5453.
February 25 - New Zealand begins working with interim mail carriers to send packages to China.
February 28 - The first confirmed case of Coronavirus in New Zealand is announced. A 60 year old permanent resident carried it back from Iran. As such, Iran was added to the travel ban, and health officials started checking more people coming from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.
Grocery stores over the weekend are flooded with people “panic buying” nonperishable food items, OTC drugs, and household staples. The media urges people not to freak out, but one wholesale grocer closes its doors on Saturday because it is out of stock.
March 1 - Contact has been made with all 18 people surrounding the infected person and all are in self-isolation. Most are in Auckland, but two are on the south island. I’ve read a lot of complaints by assorted people that fall into one of two categories. The first complaint is that not everyone on the plane was considered at risk, only the people in the surrounding two rows. People have made the comment that surely the infected person used the lavatories, perhaps walked down the plane aisles, interacted with the crew. Not to mention all of the people standing in line at customs and immigration at the Auckland airport.
The second complaint is that the government was too slow to add Iran to the travel ban list. Some people are even going so far as to say that all flights into the country should be banned until there is some sort of resolution.
March 2 - Two people are being monitored in Nelson on the south island. Meanwhile, grocery stores try to restock after a crazy weekend of panic buying. On my trip to the store today, there were picked over shelves of canned foods, boxed milk, diapers, and cough and cold supplies. In a slightly-sad/slightly-ironic twist, Corona beer is on sale for NZ$18.99 for a 12 pack.
Later in the day, schools sent out messages confirming plans to provide distance learning options if/when students are quarantined at home as well as setting boundaries on self-quarantine after travel. Basically, if you go anywhere with a confirmed case, expect to keep your kids home for 14 days after your return. Tied in with this, there’s lots of discussion about the value of travel insurance. Many people are cancelling trips planned over the upcoming school holiday and most travel insurance won’t cover this type of voluntary cancellation at this point. Apparently the travel insurance only kicks in if the country to be visited is on the do-not-travel list. On the flip side, Air New Zealand was offering NZ$9 domestic flights yesterday to try to counteract the dramatic drop in travel.
So what are we planning on doing? First is institute a rigorous hand washing regimen, especially for the kids. We figure our biggest exposure is picking this up at school, so we’re doing extra hand washing when we get home and making sure that at every wash we’re singing the Birthday Song twice. I’ve also starting adding a few extra nonperishable food items to my grocery shopping, which honestly I should’ve done a long time ago because natural disasters are a real possibility in New Zealand and we should be prepared for that anyway. I’ve also researched different online learning options in case the kids are home for a long stretch of time. This could be a really great time for us all to learn another language together. I’m thinking Mandarin - what do you think?
