Dr Nick Wilson and Dr Michael Baker say country’s ‘traffic light’ Covid protection framework is ‘not fit for purpose’

Two of New Zealand’s most prominent Covid-19 experts have warned that the country is unprepared to prevent the health system from being overloaded by an Omicron outbreak, with likely fatal consequences.

Otago University’s Dr Nick Wilson and Dr Michael Baker also said it was only a “matter of weeks” before the highly transmissible variant seeped into the community due to border failures.

The people who harass me are executives and electricians; ordinary people. They can’t imagine I’m simply motivated by wanting to save lives

On Christmas Eve I received an email to let me know I’d been added to the “accused” list on a website called Nuremberg NZ. “Kind regards”, ended the sender. Those behind Nuremberg NZ want people like me to have “thier (sic) day of reckoning” in a similar way to how Nazi war criminals were tried after the second world war. According to the website, my crimes are “misleading the public” and “supporting a government to perform medical experiment (sic) on it’s (sic) citizens”. Nuremberg NZ gives people the opportunity to leave a comment about each accused and to vote on whether they should be listed. User bennyman88 comments with one word, “Murderer”, and votes “agree”.

Great Barrier Island is about 90 kilometres off the coast of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Completely off-grid, the island is home to about 1,000 people and boasts calm bays and surf beaches as well as a dark sky sanctuary, natural hot springs, and native forests. In 2015, island local Gendie Somerville-Ryan started the ‘No Barriers: Small Island Big Ideas’ event series based on the BBC programme Big Ideas. The first event’s theme was pandemics and brought together a virologist, a young adult fiction writer, a sociologist, and a representative from Civil Defence to discuss how the island’s residents should behave if a pandemic was sweeping the world, killing all in its wake.

Rejection of Covid vaccines among wellness community has been blamed on popular social media accounts that spread disinformation

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Many know Wanaka, a picturesque tourist town at the foot of New Zealand’s Southern Alps, for its most famous tree.

The willow, which blooms uncannily from the glacial lake as if floating on water, represents different things for different people. For some, the miracles of a divine nature, for others, a marvel easily explained by science.

Critics say the wealthy will be able to buy their way in while citizens lose out on quarantine spots

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

A controversial New Zealand scheme that offers visas to wealthy foreign investors has resumed operating after a year’s hiatus due to the pandemic, prompting concern from overseas New Zealanders who fear it will place additional strain on the country’s overburdened managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) system.

Martin Newell, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Grounded Kiwis, said the scheme’s resumption would prompt “disbelief” among New Zealanders overseas, who may lose out on MIQ spots to the investors.

Few cases and high vaccination rates, but these successes have come at a cost

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

As the Covid-19 pandemic hurtles towards its second anniversary, New Zealand will emerge from 2021 with some of the best health outcomes in the world, despite confronting its toughest few pandemic months.

This year New Zealand experienced its longest lockdown, its highest daily case numbers (222 in mid-November), more hospitalisations than in 2020 and a pivot away from the government’s ambitious elimination approach to one of strict virus control. But it can now boast a 90% double vaccination for the eligible population and one of the lowest per capita death rates, while its cases in the current outbreak are trending downwards.

Border had been set to reopen to visitors and visa holders coming from Australia from 17 January

New Zealand has announced a suite of measures to strengthen its defence against the Omicron variant, including pushing back the start of its quarantine-free border reopening to the end of February.

The Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said the reopening delay will be disappointing for those who had made travel plans over summer, but added that waiting until the end of February would increase New Zealand’s overall protection and slow Omicron’s spread.

“Covid-19 keeps throwing new curve balls and we have to respond in a way that continues to protect lives and livelihoods without putting in place restrictions and lockdowns unless absolutely necessary,” Hipkins said.