Covid Shutdowns May Continue Until Vaccine Found

The Ministry of Health Chief Science advisor Ian Town has confirmed that the government’s strategy is to eliminate covid -19 in New Zealand until a vaccine becomes available.

Dr Byram Bridle, a University of Guelph immunologist commissioned by the Government of Ontario to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, says a vaccine in New Zealand will be "late, limited and last".

"The race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus is certainly on, but the timelines being reported by media, and hopeful virologists, have been greatly overstated," Dr Bridle said in a statement released on Sunday. "The promises being made of a vaccine within a year are very, very unlikely."

He says New Zealand will struggle to secure access to any version of a vaccine ahead of wealthy nations - or conversely, incredibly poor countries that have been ravaged by the disease.

New Zealand Pharmaceutical scientist Sir Ray Avery agrees “I don’t think we will see a vaccine available in New Zealand for at least another 18 months”.

New Zealand is the only country in the world to have committed to a covid elimination strategy whereby just a few case of covid could trigger a regional shutdown and eighteen months of rolling shutdowns could destroy New Zealand’s economy.

So just how realistic is it for New Zealand to aim for 100% elimination?

Firstly the timeline for maintaining elimination is likely to be eighteen months or longer and is it possible that during this timeframe that someone could slip through New Zealand’s quarantine procedures and cause community infection or that there is someone already in the community who had tested negative but is infected?

The cornerstone of the governments elimination strategy is testing all people on arrival in New Zealand and releasing them only when they test negative for covid- 19.

But how accurate is our covid -19 testing program at keeping covid infected people out of New Zealand?

The Ministry of Health states that the accuracy of the covid virus analytical laboratory test itself is around 95% accuracy but with the following caveat.

“But it is important to remember that tests don’t work as well in the real world. No viral test is 100% accurate. In real-world use, the viral test for COVID-19 is not 100% ‘sensitive’ (meaning able to correctly identify people with the disease all of the time). This means that if 100 people who have the disease are tested – some will have a negative result (i.e. a false negative result).

Reasons for a false negative test result could be because:

· the sample was taken at the wrong time (too early or too late)

· the swab did not pick up any pieces of the virus, or

· the sample of mucus (or liquid from the lungs) wasn’t big enough.

What the Government is saying here is that it’s entirely possible that people infected with covid may have already been released into the general community or will be released in the foreseeable future.

The reality is that because of the inherent inaccuracy of the covid testing and sampling procedures that unless we test 100% of new Zealand’s population on an ongoing basis with each person being retested at monthly intervals for a period of six months we will not be sure that there is no one carrying the covid -19 virus.” said Sir Ray.”

From a scientific and epidemiological perspective maintaining zero cases of covid -19 infections for eighteen months or longer until a vaccine arrives is just not realistic when your main infection diagnostic tool is inherently inaccurate and the governments quarantine protocols are clearly ineffective.

Elimination means the complete removal or destruction of something. In the next eighteen months we will learn what has been eliminated and what has been destroyed.

Sir Ray Avery GNZM

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