Stuff Digital Edition

A tale of two pandemics

We started as a single team on a single alert level – but since August 2020, Auckland has shouldered an evergreater load on behalf of the whole country, writes

Kate Newton.

For seven weeks in 2020, we were one nation under lockdown. Together, we celebrated zero Covid and the freedoms of level 1. But five months into the pandemic our paths diverged: an outbreak in Auckland put the city under stricter control measures than the rest of the country.

Since August 2020, this has happened again and again – placing a cyclical mental, physical and economic burden on Aucklanders while the rest of the country just gets on with it.

Ta¯ maki Makaurau now faces its greatest test yet as the city battles to get a Delta outbreak under control.

Tomorrow marks six extra weeks at levels 3 and 4 for Auckland since the start of the pandemic: 42 days longer in the wilderness of lockdown, juggling working from home with life at home, or worse – not being able to work, or not even having a job to go to. Even once the alert level drops, there’s a stint at level 3 still to come.

The region’s case burden has doubled in the space of a month and now surpasses everywhere else in New Zealand combined. Early in this outbreak, Auckland’s total cases of Covid-19 even surpassed the number detected in MIQ facilities throughout the pandemic. The psychological impact now includes a greater risk of actually contracting the virus.

For Aucklander Tze Ming Mok, the overwhelming emotion generated by successive lockdowns is apathy.

‘‘There’s a lot less fear and uncertainty and it’s more like a grind. I don’t even really make a big effort to have Zoom drinks with friends or have a lot of social contact, really. Definitely by the end of week four I was losing my s... a little bit so I thought, ‘Oh! I should call a friend’.’’

Her nine-year-old son is now old enough to attend online classes without much assistance. Last year, she was more involved with supervising him and planning extra activities. ‘‘I’m too tired for that now.’’

She’s quick to point out that other Aucklanders are in a much more precarious situation than she is. For example, South Auckland, with its proximity to quarantine facilities and Auckland International Airport, and high number of people in vulnerable situations, is the true epicentre.

‘‘When people say Auckland’s doing it tough, that’s who’s doing it tough. I’m sitting in bed working – I’m fine. I’m getting paid 100 per cent.’’

Stats NZ data compiled for Auckland Council’s research unit, RIMU, shows that unemployment rates in South Auckland were still unusually high in March, which is the usual seasonal employment peak. (The data does have a large margin of error.)

Auckland councillor for Manurewa, Fa’anana Efeso Collins, says ‘‘the cloud feels a little bit heavier this time round’’ for many in his community. Four lockdown periods have taken their toll, including financially. ‘‘For those of us who had a little buffer, that was all used up last time.’’

He worries, too, about the young people in the community who may not find it easy or even possible to attend school online.

Over the 2020 and 2021 school years, Auckland pupils have now missed 69 days of in-person school and counting, compared to 39 days for their peers elsewhere – a whole additional month of learning, gone. With school holidays likely to begin before lockdown ends, most will not return to the classroom until mid-October.

‘‘What we fear is that when kids have been out of the system for such a long time, it doesn’t just mean that the children are out of the routine – whole families are out of the routine,’’ Collins says.

Analysis published by Stuff last year showed that the Auckland August lockdown had a disproportionate effect on pupils at lower decile schools, where attendance took weeks longer to return to normal compared to wealthier schools.

A briefing prepared by The Southern Initiative, an Auckland Council-funded entity, says there’s every reason to expect those same students – predominantly in South Auckland – to become disengaged from education in the months immediately after the latest lockdown.

Collins says throughout the pandemic, South Auckland has either been ignored, including community leaders’ repeated calls for Ma¯ ori and Pasifika to be directly involved in the vaccine roll-out; or maligned.

‘‘One of the mantras we have out here is ‘only the hood has the answers for the hood’,’’ he says. ‘‘Where that mantra becomes a challenge is when we start to believe no-one outside of the hood appreciates what we’re going through.’’

The level of ‘‘belligerence’’ directed at South Auckland on social media has exacerbated that. ‘‘We are part of the team of five million. I don’t want us to start to become inward-looking because we believe the outward vitriol is all we can expect.’’

That vitriol is despite South Auckland bearing more than its fair share of the health burden. Time and again, people in Counties Manukau DHB area have heeded the call to get tested for Covid-19 and it now has the country’s highest testing rates. Within that, Pasifika have the highest rates of all, averaging 1.6 tests per person since the beginning of the pandemic. That is double the rate of other major ethnicities in Counties Manukau and 10 times the rate of the least-tested DHB (West Coast).

Collins says much of the government’s Covid-19 response has been ‘‘reactive’’ but it is now time for those leading the charge to look for ways to share the load beyond Auckland. ‘‘It’s happened to Auckland enough times now for those who have their thinking hats on to start thinking about specific MIQ facilities outside of Auckland and flights coming into Christchurch, Wellington and other ports in the nation.’’

He is also among those critical of the vaccine roll-out. Despite the higher risk, higher case numbers, and the greater economic fallout, Auckland has never been prioritised for the vaccine rollout and its rates of immunisation are not much higher than the rest of the country.

Auckland mayor Phil Goff called for the region to be first in the queue for vaccines as early as March. ‘‘You need to prioritise your vaccination where the risk is greatest. We started off by prioritising border workers, those with comorbidities, the older people. It’s time to say, now we’ve got to prioritise those most at risk of catching Covid – and guess what area that is?’’

High vaccination rates are also crucial to ending New Zealand’s hard border and welcoming back some visitors.

Independent economist Shamubeel Eaqub says that although concerns about international tourism have focused on resort towns like Queenstown, those tourists still spend more dollars in Auckland than anywhere else.

Combined with the ‘‘slow exodus’’ of residents on temporary and student visas – from about 300,000 to 70,000 – and more

‘‘hybrid workers’’ who now work one or two days a week at home, there are now fewer people spending time, and money, in the CBD.

Some of those changes are likely to be long-term, Eaqub says.

‘‘The hybrid working, I think, is going to last for a while. It’s more the managerial classes and the professional services that can do that … [but] parts of the economy will be very different.’’

Structural changes to immigration policy that were already being phased in pre-pandemic will mean no sudden rush of new migrants to Auckland when border restrictions are finally relaxed, though. With more people moving from Auckland to other regions than vice versa (a trend in Auckland since the 1990s but exacerbated by house prices), migrant Aucklanders were the driving force behind population growth, Eaqub says.

Many of them ended up studying or working in hospitality – two sectors that have taken body blows from border restrictions and successive lockdowns.

Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen says the successive lockdowns in Auckland have chipped away at the resilience of many businesses.

‘‘The challenge with a lot of it is how many times you get set back.’’

Businesses in other parts of the country found turnover increased again in the long periods between lockdowns but the bounceback in Auckland was not as strong, and was also interrupted by the August and February mini-lockdowns, Olsen says.

‘‘They haven’t been able to build up the same buffer as the rest of the country. That does introduce greater vulnerability.’’

Olsen believes Auckland’s experience of the pandemic has also tinged the city with a more pessimistic – or at least realistic – outlook. ‘‘Auckland has had this view for a while that they know they’re going to be hit by another outbreak. That’s weighed on sentiment and business conditions even if it’s not that clear in the numbers – there’s this hesitancy and concern.’’

Karangahape Business Association manager Michael Richardson is hearing that from the many small owner-operator businesses and venues that line Karangahape Road and the surrounding streets in central Auckland.

‘‘This lockdown is a long one and we don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on for. It’s also more intense because of the nature of this strain of the virus.’’

The innovative spirit of Karangahape, along with government support, kept many businesses afloat during previous lockdowns and customers were quick to come back, Richardson says.

However, the tighter level 2 restrictions this time will make it difficult or impossible for some of those businesses to open their doors even when lockdown ends. ‘‘They’re left with some fairly difficult decisions.’’

That threatens the area’s whole ecosystem, with hospitality and other local businesses providing day-to-day income for many of the musicians and artists who thrive within the local creative scene.

In no way do Auckland’s periods of lockdown compare to experiences overseas, including months of lockdown in the UK and Melbourne – which recently marked its 200th day of stay-at-home orders.

Those international experiences do point to the risks of prolonged isolation, Victoria University clinical psychologist Dougal Sutherland says. ‘‘The longer they went on, the worse that seemed to be for people.’’

In contrast, even Auckland has had long periods of reprieve at level 1 that may shield people from that cumulative effect. ‘‘In some ways I wonder if the yo-yo effect [in Auckland] is a bit of a pressure release, which is better than being in a long, long period of lockdown.’’

Nor does Sutherland sense that the two different experiences of the pandemic have created an irreconcilable split between Auckland and everyone else. ‘‘It still feels like there’s a sense of unity and that we’re battling a common enemy, which is Covid, not each other.’’

That is how the government continues to frame the current outbreak, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern leading the charge to thank Aucklanders at the daily press briefing on August 30.

‘‘Auckland is doing a huge service for all of us, and not just now but throughout this pandemic. It’s Auckland that has maintained our gateway to the world, that has done a lot of the heavy lifting in welcoming Kiwis home safely, that has worked hard to keep the rest of New Zealand safe when there has been an outbreak. Auckland has done it tough, and they’ve done it tough for all of us.’’

Tze Ming Mok doesn’t need the country’s gratitude. After alert level 4 was extended for Auckland and dropped for the rest of the country, she tweeted: ‘‘Auckland is maintaining Level 4 because we are more hardcore than the rest of you softarses basically.’’

The tweet, which went mildly viral, epitomises Auckland’s ability to suck it up, she says.

‘‘Bigger cities have a particular mentality about them, which is, f… you. And that’s our strength.’’

Focus

en-nz

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281947430985807

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