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Richard Meade, Auckland University of Technology Faced with a COVID-19 pandemic of unknown severity and duration, governments around the world are looking for effective and sustainable ways to maintain economic confidence and employment. Even New Zealand, where lockdowns have been few and short-lived, is confronting the reality of repeated lockdowns, especially since the United Kingdom variant has now been detected …

David Welch, University of Auckland; Jemma Geoghegan, University of Otago; Joep de Ligt, ESR, and Nigel French, Massey University New variants of SARS-CoV-2 have now evaded New Zealand’s border protections twice to spread into the community. In the most recent outbreak, which placed Auckland into an alert level 3 lockdown, there are three active community cases of the more infectious …

Michael Plank, University of Canterbury and Shaun Hendy, University of Auckland Relaxing border restrictions for travellers from low COVID-19 risk countries would increase the risk of community cases in New Zealand by around 25%, says an article published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal. This might not sound like a big increase in risk, but it means breaches like …

Today’s provisional approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine means New Zealand could start rolling out its COVID-19 immunisation programme as early as next month. In announcing the approval, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said border workers and the people they live with, cleaners and nurses working at quarantine facilities, security and airline staff and hotel workers would be among the first to …

Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity Australia New Zealand’s coronavirus contact-tracing app COVID Tracer was revamped yesterday. It now uses the Bluetooth-based Google/Apple exposure notification (GAEN) framework. This allows Android and Apple (iOS) devices to communicate via a contact-tracing mechanism built into the devices’ operating systems. Meanwhile, Australia continues to use the COVIDSafe app, which also uses Bluetooth, but with a different underlying …

The 2020 Dynamic Business report exclusively reported on the Deloitte Top 200 awards and looks at the country’s biggest companies as they sprung back from what was undoubtedly one of the trickiest years in recent history due to the setbacks brought about by Covid-19.  

The 2020 Capital Markets report took a look at the effect of Covid-19 on New Zealand’s economy.  

The 2020 Infrastructure report looked into the ways New Zealand and its businesses could build back better in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

The 2020 Sustainable Finance report looked at the road ahead for New Zealand following the Covid-19 pandemic.    

Melissa Conley Tyler, University of Melbourne China has certainly got Australia’s attention with a highly inflammatory tweet from a government spokesperson. It has provoked the desired reaction — a storm of outrage. This is the latest in an ever-growing list of problems between Australia and China. In recent days, China imposed new tariffs on wine, while Australia threatened legal action …