population immunity – ‘aka’
herd immunity.
There are three factors that stand in
the way of population immunity and any future relaxation of
border controls. These are vaccine hesitancy & vaccine
skepticism, children under 16 years old not being
vaccinated, and to a lesser extent vaccine ineffectiveness.
These factors effectively mean approximately half of our
entire population will not be immune after the full rollout
of the COVID-19 vaccination. This effectively will stop our
borders from opening.
The end game of the NZ
elimination strategy relies on effective treatments and/or a
vaccine to support the strategy’s pillars; of border
controls, detection/surveillance, contact tracing and