Senior Research Fellow, Department of Public Health, University of Otago Wellington.
Senior Lecturer, Department of Primary Health Care and General Practice, University of Otago Wellington.
N Z Med J. 2020 Dec 18;133(1527):8-14.
Between August and November 2020, Aotearoa New Zealand experienced eight known failures of the COVID-19 border control system. Multiple introductions of this highly transmissible virus into New Zealand's almost completely susceptible population present a high risk of uncontrollable spread, threatening New Zealand's elimination strategy. In this editorial, we propose that, although steps are being taken reactively in response to these known breaches, systematic underestimation of risk across the pandemic response makes future failures inevitable. We present an epidemiological framework for identifying and addressing risk, giving examples of actions that can be taken to reduce the probability of further outbreaks and enable New Zealand to benefit from sustained elimination of COVID-19.
2020 年 8 月至 11 月期间，新西兰经历了八次已知的新冠疫情边境控制系统故障。这种高传染性病毒多次传入新西兰几乎完全易感的人群中，存在不可控传播的高风险，威胁着新西兰的消除战略。在这篇社论中，我们提出，尽管正在针对这些已知的漏洞采取反应性措施，但在整个大流行应对过程中，对风险的系统性低估使得未来的失败不可避免。我们提出了一个用于识别和处理风险的流行病学框架，并给出了可以采取的行动示例，以降低进一步爆发的概率，并使新西兰能够从持续消除新冠病毒中受益。
