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Auckland’s rapid lockdown has given New Zealand a better chance of eliminating coronavirus – again

University of Canterbury (UC) academics, Professor Michael Plank and Associate Professor Alex James, collaborate with academics from the University of Auckland (UoA) in an article for The Conversation to provide their expert insight into the positive impact Auckland’s lockdown will have on eliminating Covid-19 in New Zealand – again.

A worker hands out information to people entering a community testing centre. Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Our model of COVID-19 spread in New Zealand shows the extension by an extra four days at level 3 until Monday has also increased our chances of eliminating community transmission of the virus by about 10%.

Auckland has been at alert level 3 since August 12, less than 24 hours after the first new community cases of COVID-19 in more than 100 days were reported.

Contact-tracing data show that before Auckland’s move to level 3, the reproduction number was between 2 and 3. This means that on average each new case passed the virus on to two or three other people.

If we hadn’t acted quickly, we would have had hundreds of new cases by now, and it would have become far more difficult to bring the outbreak under control.

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