Without a dramatic change in New Zealand\u2019s vaccination rates, Covid-19 risks becoming a disease for brown people<\/p>\n
And so with that, a confusing 20-minute monologue in the Beehive theatrette, New Zealand\u2019s virus-beating elimination strategy is over. As the Delta variant\u2019s \u201ctentacles\u201d, to borrow the prime minister\u2019s description, creep past the Auckland border, potentially wrapping themselves around parts of the Waikato, the government will no longer aim to cut the monster off at its head with tough alert level four restrictions. Instead public health officials will move to a suppression strategy<\/a> aiming \u201cto contain and control the virus\u201d while we vaccinate our way out of the pandemic. At its simplest, Jacinda Ardern\u2019s message from the threatrette was vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.<\/p>\n For 18 months New Zealanders were living life as if there were no pandemic. We were gathering outdoors and indoors in the thousands, mask mandates were literally a foreign concept, and business and public services were operating more or less as normal. We were watching governments that let the virus rip with a good dose of horror and, if we\u2019re honest, a modest dose of smugness. And so yesterday\u2019s announcement \u2013 that the virus will remain resident in this country \u2013 feels like a form of whiplash. Only two weeks ago the prime minister stood in that familiar theatrette and told the country<\/a> returning to zero cases was still the goal.<\/p>\n