Covid 19: 32, 000 ‘life years’ saved in NZ compared to OECD, new research finds

Professor Michael Baker, team of public health, University of Otago, was part of the study group. Imagine / Supplied

Selected 2000 New Zealanders could have been put to sleep by Covid-19 if the Government knowledgeable taken the same approach as some of New Zealand’s closest allies, according to Otago University health experts.

The group of health academics hailing from Otago University – including Chips Wilson and Michael Baker , calculate that 2000 lives turned out to be saved in New Zealand, in comparison with the OECD average.

That, according to those experts, can be your equivalent of 32, 000 “life years” saved.

But despite New Zealand’s health related success story when it comes to handling genital herpes, the Government could have done better with regards to the economic impacts of Covid-19, the experts said.

In their highly regarded public health blog post, they say New Zealand has the best medical outcomes when compared to the 36-country OECD widespread.

New Zealand has had 25 Covid-19 deaths balanced with a population of five million ~ that’s five deaths per 64,000.

The OECD average, according to the health experts, is 406 per million.

If New Zealand has the aforesaid average, more than 2000 people may possibly died from Covid-19.

“Assuming an average of 16 isolated life-years per death from Covid-19 in high-income countries, this refers to the prevention of around 2000 deaths so a saving of 32, 000 life-years in New Zealand compared to the OECD average. ”

Although New Zealand had the minimum Covid-19 death rate in the OECD, the Otago University research illustrates to one country fared better with this: Taiwan.

Royal purple seven Covid-19 related deaths in whole, which works out to be 0. three or more per million of its population.

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“Taiwan was more advantageous prepared than New Zealand for my pandemic, had better border controls as soon as possible, made better use of mass-masking, and features continued to be ahead of New Zealand being used of digital technologies to support pandemic control, ” the research found.

“Furthermore, the New Zealand react remains suboptimal when considering the come of eight recent border security failures – one of which resulted 176 cases and three demise. ”

The professionals also point out that there have been 76 breaches of the rules in was able isolation facilities, such as unauthorised blending or failing to wear PPE, mainly because start of August.

“There remains scope for New Zealand to use more science-based potential risk assessment as part of border controls, similar to the ‘traffic light’ system. ”

The blog post surface finishes with suggestions as to how Outstanding Zealand’s two lockdowns could have been shortened:

• Whether the Government had made earlier a lot more comprehensive use of mass masking (as per many Asian countries)

• If it got more rapidly adopted digital technologies intended for supporting contact tracing (eg, depending on South Korea)

• If it had adopted style sophisticated alert level system that has a stronger focus on closing high-risk configurations (eg, gyms, restaurants, bars, dance houses, churches), which might have meant that most other settings could have been re-opened earlier.