This Friday, February 28, marks five years since COVID-19 was first reported in Aotearoa New Zealand. At a population level, it remains our most harmful infectious disease, with thousands of hospitalisations and 664 deaths last year.
Understandably perhaps, many people want to move on from the early pandemic years, and there is a temptation to minimise COVID’s threat now the emergency response has passed.
But it deserves a proportionate response that draws on the rich evidence we now have of how to minimise the harms of respiratory infections and the health and economic benefits that come from managing them well.
The epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to change. Hospitalisations provide the most consistent measure of incidence trends. Wastewater testing shows similar successive waves of…