Have Australia and New Zealand stopped Covid-19 in its tracks?

Its more than 35,000km of coastline was always going to be Australia’s most potent weapon in the fight against coronavirus, but even so, the speed with which it was deployed was breathtaking.

Without warning on Thursday 19 March, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced “Australia is closing its borders to all-non citizens”, the ban effective from 9pm the next day.

That left visitors and visa holders stranded mid-journey, or turned around at the border and packed back on to planes, and left hundreds of thousands of Australians scrambling to get home, many of whom remain stuck in countries similarly locked down or without flights home.

Australia and neighbouring New Zealand, almost unique among anglophone countries, have so far been successful in largely suppressing the spread of Covid-19 within their countries, and in particular, keeping deaths low.

Australia, with a population of 25 million, has had just over 6,000 infections, and 50 deaths. New Zealand, a country of 5 million people, which closed its borders the day before Australia, has had 1,200 infections and so far only one death from Covid-19.

Both countries have enacted strict physical distancing regimes, enforced by police. Planes have been grounded, workers have been told to stay home, schools have been closed in some places, and entire industries put into hibernation.

Across most of both countries, it is unlawful to be outside without the “reasonable excuse” of essential shopping, medical care, exercise, or compassionate grounds. In both countries, the majority of confirmed cases have originated overseas. Community transmission remains, by international comparison, low– less than 10% of all confirmed cases.

And in both countries, the early decision, and the capability, to enforce a total lockdown of borders has proven crucial, buying valuable time to prepare, and allowing both nations to flatten the trajectory of their Covid-19 infection curves.

“We have so far avoided the horror scenarios that we have seen overseas, whether it be initially in China in Wuhan, or in New York in the United States, or Italy, or Spain, or even the United Kingdom,” Morrison said this week. “But we must hold the course. We must lock in these gains.”

Australia has inherent advantages. If a country were to be designed to withstand a viral pandemic such as Covid-19, it would look very much like Australia: geographically distant, a large island nation with borders than can be locked down, inhabited by a comparatively small population that lives, in the main, in low-density cities.

Australia is wealthy, too, with a highly developed public health system, and a government sufficiently solvent to be able to turn on the tap of public monies to get its population through the months of lockdown. Legislation for $130bn (£65bn) in wage subsidies for those who have lost jobs because of the pandemic passed the parliament this week, on top of $84bn in economic stimulus promised earlier.

Australia also has had the advantage of watching the Covid-19 pandemic unfold in other countries. The delay has given it time to prepare its public health system – additional beds and staff have been readied for the coming peak– as well as its public. Internal restrictions have also been put in place. Australia’s states have closed their borders to each other for the first time since the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919.

There have been significant and severe missteps, the most egregious the decision in March to allow the Ruby Princess cruise ship to dock at Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour, allowing more than 2,700 passengers to disembark without testing, despite there being people with Covid-19 infections onboard.

That ship is now responsible for more than 660 infections – 10% of Australia’s total – and at least 15 deaths. The New South Wales (NSW) and federal governments have since spent weeks blaming each other and the cruise ship company for the debacle: the decision is now the subject of a criminal investigation by police.

Another misstep was at Sydney airport. Just as social distancing laws were being imposed across the country, social media videos showed border force officials corralling arriving passengers from all over the world to wait in cramped halls and tight queues.

Beyond the impact on infections these failures have brought has been the damage to public confidence in the government’s measures. Just as the country, state by state, was being put into lockdown, governments were undermining their own messages to self-isolate to save lives.

There has been, too, overreaction. In NSW, a man was fined by police for sitting on a park bench and eating a kebab. In Victoria, a learner driver practising with her mother was handed a $1,600 fine, later rescinded after a backlash.

But Australians have, by and large, tolerated the imposition of lockdowns.

After thousands gathered at Bondi Beach on a warm autumnal Friday evening in March, it was summarily shut down and put under police guard. With occasional defiance, it has remained eerily deserted since.

New Zealand’s centre-left government closed its borders to foreign nationals a day before Australia, and then, 10 days later, introduced some of the toughest lockdown measures in the world, before a single death had occurred, and when cases had just passed 100.

“Stay home, save lives,” the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, urged her citizens, ordering them to remain in their homes for a month. “The situation here is moving at pace, and so must we. The trajectory is very clear, act now or risk the virus taking hold as it has elsewhere.”

Ardern said the worst-case scenario was “simply intolerable” – up to 80,000 dead, modelling predicted – representing the greatest loss of life in New Zealand’s history. “I will not take that chance,” Ardern said. “We’re going hard and we’re going early.”

The nation was given two days to prepare, panic buying was widespread. But when the moment came – effective house arrest for the majority of the population – there was absolute quiet on the streets.

Despite their reputation for having an independent streak and a benign disdain for authority, New Zealanders have been overwhelmingly compliant with the restrictive measures, with a total of 367 breaches recorded by police. Eager surfers and mountain bikers have caused the most persistent headaches, according to the police commissioner.

New Zealand is one of the few countries worldwide to pursue an “elimination” strategy, and the plan has the backing of the scientific community, many of whom want the country to stay in a version of lockdown until a vaccine can be deployed.

David Skegg, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Otago, said: “We could effectively eliminate the virus over the next few weeks … we still have a window of opportunity but only if we lift our game quickly”

The epidemiologist Prof Michael Baker, also of Otago University, is one of the key architects behind New Zealand’s coronavirus defence plan. He says an elimination strategy is well suited to an island state, where borders can be swiftly and effectively closed.

Writing in the New Zealand Medical Journal Baker said the strategy would save lives, but at huge social and economic cost, particularly “for those with the fewest resources”. “New Zealand society has made a large ‘upfront’ sacrifice in pursuing an elimination strategy,” he said.

For the first 12 days of lockdown, the numbers of cases rose steadily, as predicted by health officials. But cases have been steadily declining, and the prime minister has said she is “cautiously optimistic” that the strategy is working.

On Wednesday New Zealand recorded its lowest number of new cases in a fortnight, one day after testing a record number of people. More people are now recovering from the disease than being infected by it, an “encouraging milestone” the country’s director general of health said.

Attention and anticipation is turning to a gradual exit from lockdown in late April. Ardern has said it is likely some regions of the country will remain in total lockdown, while regions with few or no cases will ease into more freedoms. The borders remain closed to foreign nationals, and mandatory quarantining of arrivals is to be introduced today.

“We have positive signs, not least the fact that we could have had 4,000 cases now, instead of 1,000,” Ardern said.

“But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves … though the signs are positive.”