New Zealand’s COVID-19 response strategy: lessons learnt

Abstract

This study analyzed the characteristics of the health system, surveillance system, and the measures adopted to face the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand between March 2020 and December 2021. 29 fully read articles from an integrative literature review were included, and the websites of the WHO, the World Bank, the “Stringency Index” of “ourworldindata” were consulted to collect data on the socio-demographic situation, economic indicators of the country, as well as tests, deaths, vaccines and new cases. The data were imported in CSV format and the graphs elaborated in RStudio software. The evidence points out that New Zealand can be considered a success story regarding the nationwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it being one of the countries with the lowest number of deaths from the disease in the world. This success was the result of a health system organization with fast internal action, high testing capacity, and contact tracing, without causing the collapse of the health system. In turn, it also pointed out that the population adhered to the confinement conditions, and faithfully followed the authorities’ instructions, even with low community participation in government decisions. Important lessons can be learnt leading to useful recommendations for a potential new epidemic with an unknown virus or similar.