Omicron has arrived – here’s what’s next

All of New Zealand moves into red restrictions as the country braces for the most transmissible variant's impact.

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday, January 24, by Duncan Greive, standing in for Justin Giovannetti. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Omicron is in the community – we assess what that means for all of us. Elsewhere, billions of dollars of hyperscale data centres are announced, police continue to miss major road safety targets and more evidence of the devastation in Tonga emerges.

Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Yesterday a hastily arranged press conference in the Beehive theatrette saw Jacinda Ardern announce that omicron is circulating in the community, with 10 cases related to a single Motueka household, plus two other connected cases, enough to move all of New Zealand into red under the government’s Covid-19 Protection Framework as of 11.59pm yesterday.

The moment felt like it had been building for weeks, with cases at the border frequently outnumbering those in the community, and multiple minor incursions leading to a sense that omicron’s arrival was inevitable. The message from Ardern was subtly but tellingly different to prior announcements – where once we were looking to “stop the spread”, yesterday’s line was “slow the spread”, a recognition that the immense transmissibility of omicron means that there is no realistic path to holding it back once it emerges.

The variant appears to produce less severe illness than delta, particularly in those vaccinated and boosted, which means concern about spread has to be modulated with the willingness of the population to undergo more stringent restrictions. None of this should make us relaxed about what this outbreak means – as Siouxsie Wiles writes for The Spinoff this morning “around the world, these rapid rises in omicron cases have been followed by rapid rises in hospitalisations and deaths.”

While there are just 11 official omicron cases at this stage, plus a 12th suspected, the South Island cases have returned from an Auckland trip that featured a number of events with potential for mass transmission (check locations of interest here), most notably a wedding. These have been associated with major outbreaks throughout the pandemic, but are also now much harder to hold as we switch to red, with Ardern admitting from the lectern that her own impending ceremony will be delayed. That’s but one of thousands of events impacted, with music festival Splore among the first to announce its cancellation for 2022. The broader economic impact will take a different form to prior outbreaks for a variety of reasons:

• Omicron hits a highly vaccinated population, with nearly 80% of our total population having received at least two doses.

• Red under the protection framework restricts large gatherings but otherwise allows most activities to continue if vaccine passes are used, with additional masking advice.

• Judging by outbreaks in other countries, the most significant economic impact will come from the availability of workers, with tens of thousands likely to be isolating and unable to work during the caseload peak.

Because there is no lockdown planned, government support for business is far more contained, with limited payments to cover those who are sick or isolating announced by finance minister Grant Robertson. Business NZ’s Kirk Hope told the NZ Herald’s Chris Keall that "when omicron and the ‘big sick’ hits, we're going to find ourselves in the midst of a supply chain crisis. With the infectious nature of the variant, many people will need to take time away from their jobs to isolate and recover."

The business sector critique of the government’s plan was echoed by National and Act, which said the plan saw the government applying a delta approach to a very different virus. National leader Chris Luxon emphasised the lack of supply and availability of rapid antigen tests, which have been critical to understanding the scale of transmission overseas. “Until recently, rapid antigen tests were illegal and they are still extremely hard to come by now,” he told a press conference in Nelson. “New Zealand companies are waiting weeks for permission to import them while in other countries like Australia, you can walk into the supermarket and buy one off the shelf.”

This was in response to what Ardern has characterised as the “three stages” approach the government is planning under omicron. The first begins now, and essentially mirrors the approach under delta, with PCR testing and the maintenance of the prior approach to contact tracing and home isolation. The second, which begins when caseloads surpass 1,000 per day – nearly five times the previous peak  – will see a pivot to a greater focus on those with potential for serious illness. The third will see major changes of emphasis around testing and isolation, a recognition of the fact that as infections crest there are likely to be major impacts on the availability of essential workers and the potential for significant disruption to supply chains.

The prime minister signalled that further detail about these stages will arrive on Wednesday, by which time Aotearoa will have a far better sense of how far omicron has spread. The next few weeks will be among the most trying of the pandemic, but they also carry with them a sense that we could be moving into its final stage. Experience in other countries shows that the infections rise incredibly swiftly, but tend to peak around six to eight weeks after omicron’s spread is detected. For New Zealanders overseas, or those who have friends and whānau desperate to return, omicron’s arrival will likely prove the end of the MIQ system as we know it, as Chris Hipkins acknowledged prior to the announcement.

New Zealand has several advantages, including the virus arriving in high summer, when people are more likely to interact outdoors, and a high vaccination rate. Still, the health system is bracing itself for the most challenging period of the pandemic, as Justin Latif reported for The Spinoff. To minimise the impact, we all need to heed the prime minister’s most forceful message: “get boosted” – the single most important action individuals can take to protect their communities against omicron.

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A note from Duncan Greive, publisher of The Spinoff:

Omicron means that, yet again, we at The Spinoff will be devoting significant resources to covering this enormous and complex story. It comes just as we caught our breath after delta, which arrived and hit our commercial revenues hard just as we’d made a major investment in people – hiring more journalists, along with data and technology specialists to help make our work more robust, tactile and accessible.

I need to be frank: we have never experienced anything remotely so challenging as the past six months, and I approach the coming weeks with trepidation, as so many others in business will be doing. So if you value what we do, please donate today. Every dollar is ring-fenced to support our journalism, and right now we need reader support more than ever. One more thing: if your organisation wants to partner or advertise with The Spinoff, we would really love to hear from you – contact our head of commercial Saj Patel to find out how to get involved across our platforms.

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One of the most fascinating stories rising lately has been the number of “hyperscale” data centres coming to New Zealand. These are crucial pieces of infrastructure for cloud computing, which sits underneath much of the modern internet, with everything from Netflix to The Spinoff running on cloud infrastructure provided by technology giants like Amazon and Microsoft. Both those businesses are among those that have announced enormous investments into new data centres, as covered by the NZ Herald’s technology reporter Chris Keall over the weekend. They will create thousands of jobs in their construction and beyond, but are notoriously power hungry. Part of what makes New Zealand attractive to this kind of investment is our renewable energy mix, as these companies look to transition to a zero emissions future. But with major new demand coming in as our transport fleet electrifies, there remains an open question about where the new capacity to meet all this demand will come from.

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Coverage of the volcanic eruption and tsunami in Tonga has unfolded in more halting terms than we’re used to in large part because the cable connecting the islands to the rest of the world was severed, and will take some time to be restored. This has meant that over a week later we’re still learning just how hard parts of the islands were hit. The New York Times has done strong coverage, some written by Natasha Frost from Auckland, including the revelation yesterday that Nomuka, Mango and Fonoifua were hit by waves nearly 50 feet high, with just two structures surviving on Fonoifua. The only bright spot remains that the death toll remains at three, mercifully low given the scale of the events. Meanwhile, across the Pacific in Sāmoa, a short lockdown has been imposed due to the spread of Covid-19, which arrived on a flight from Brisbane.

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A stubborn trend of police badly missing road safety targets continued in 2021, with Stuff’s George Block reporting on Waka Kotahi data showing that just half the targeted number of breath tests occurred last year. Meanwhile speed cameras were deployed for just over 60,000 hours, against a target of 100,000 hours. Assistant commissioner Bruce O’Brien acknowledged the failing, but it is part of a long-established trend, with the number of breath alcohol tests in Auckland dropping by more than half over the past seven years. While the decision to suspend testing during level four lockdowns played a part, Waka Kotahi said that less than 10% of the diminished testing numbers could be attributed to it.

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Few industries have been as impacted by the internet as music, with wave upon wave of disruption from Napster, to the iPod, to the rise of streaming and social media and latterly Tiktok almost taking over the industry’s talent identification function. For someone who got their start in music journalism, its evolution remains endlessly fascinating – I view it as the media form that has responded to change with the most dynamism. One of the most intriguing stories to emerge from it, though, is one which firmly resists the technological determinism of the past 20 years – the continuing, seemingly unstoppable, rise of vinyl, which last year overtook CDs in sales for the first time since the 80s. Chris Schulz, one of a clutch of great journalists to have joined The Spinoff over the past six months, has a brilliant story about Holiday Records – the first new vinyl pressing plant to launch in Aotearoa in decades.

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Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news?
Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz

Right now on The Spinoff: Siouxsie Wiles gives a primer on what to expect from omicron. Felix Walton on the troubling unintended consequences of changes to our lending rules. Catherine Woulfe uncovers a mystery in local children’s book publishing. Charlotte Muru-Lanning makes the case for re-filing doing the dishes from a chore to a meditative pleasure. Sam Brooks assesses the role of a complex figure in a new TVNZ reality show.

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In sports: Two huge events snuck in on Saturday ahead of the move to red. One was a triumphant Western Springs show for reggae band L.A.B. – read the fascinating backstory to the chorus-less smash ‘In the Air’. The other was the Black Clash, superbly described by Calum Henderson as a “cricket match that seems like it should be for charity but isn’t” in this perfect piece about the cricket legends he wants to see turn out in this oddly compelling annual fixture that pits ageing rugby players against ageing cricket players at cricket. It’s assembled by the Alternative Commentary Collective, a group of foul-mouthed ardent cricket fans who should be among the first mentioned when we talk about media innovation in the country, but aren’t.

The black clash played out on Saturday night, with team rugby smoking home thanks to heroic performances from noted rugby players like Tom Walsh and Brendon McCullum. None of it makes any sense, but then sport is a deeply weird and over-serious enterprise when you really think about it, and injecting humour into it should be done more often. We’re heading into months of sporting disruption – at times the NBA this year has been comically bad, with literally hundreds of journeymen drafted in as cover for stars out due to omicron – so it was a relief that this silly, fun match got to play out just before the virus came calling again.

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