𝔽𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕪𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕤 𝕠𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 ℕ𝕖𝕨 ℤ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕'𝕤 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 ℂ𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕕-𝟙𝟡 𝕔𝕒𝕤𝕖

𝕀𝕥 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕗𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕪𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕤 𝕤𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕨 ℤ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕'𝕤 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕕 ℂ𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕕-𝟙𝟡 𝕔𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕪 ℕ𝕖𝕨 ℤ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕒𝕚𝕟 𝕔𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕣.

T

hat summer, our skies turned an eerie orange sepia, due to smoke from Australia's bushfires, and a strange new virus called Covid-19 was spreading around the world.

Our first case of coronavirus was a woman in her 60s who had arrived from Iran.

Five years later, most people on the streets of Tāmaki Makaurau told First Up they remembered where they were when they heard the news.

A couple who were backpacking in Vietnam at the time said they did not realise how serious things were until the army started arriving and closing down the hostels.

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Another woman said she had just arrived home from work and started panicking because most of her stuff was still in the office.

Many said the start of the pandemic feels like a lifetime ago.

One woman said she had "blacked out" most of her memories from that time.

But there was one memory that stuck, the stampedes for toilet paper at the supermarket

One woman said she did not understand why everyone was lining up for it.

"Watching everybody getting frustrated, everyone was counting their losses. It's unreal to watch," another man told First Up.

By February 2020, the Ministry of Health had started briefings, which became national viewing during lockdown.

And one man who found himself at the centre of it all was then Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

Just months before the virus arrived in Aotearoa, he told a friend a pandemic was the last thing on his wishlist.

"He'd asked me, 'what's the worst thing that could happen during your time as director-general of health?' And I had said to him, 'you know, probably a global pandemic'."

Sir Ashley was on a mountain biking trip in the South Island when he learned about patient zero.

"I had to immediately call off the rest of the trip and catch the first flight back to Wellington the next morning from Westport."

But nothing prepared him for the celebrity status that came with the job.

In the following months, Bloomfield mugs, T-shirts and tea towels started appearing online.

"There was a little bit of sort of a fuss about the role that I played and I guess there's a whole lot of merchandise around the country now that people bought at the time, which is got very low residual value," he said.

"But if nothing else a memento of a pretty extraordinary time and everybody's lives."

At the start of 2020 the government established the Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group.

Epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker was one of several experts on the panel.

"I think there were a lot of alarm bells ringing, so we knew that if you see one case in the population that's the tip of the iceberg.

"We could see how this pandemic was evolving overseas and by the end of January how the virus had behaved, how infectious it was and getting some sense of also how dangerous it was."

Like Sir Ashley, he too, went from leading a rather quiet life to being in the media every day - sometimes several times a day.

"I was quite surprised and shocked it just how intense the media coverage was.

"The hard part of talking with the media is not actually the interviews. It's really clarifying what your messages are and when you've got a science basis, your big concern is to make sure that your evidence is as as solid as possible at that time and that's what used to cause me the most anxiety."

As for people on the streets of Auckland, five years on, several told First Up Covid-19 had changed some hygiene habits.

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"I think I've learned to be more hygienically aware of everytime I touch something unusual to wash my hands," said one man.

Another couple said they were mindful about staying at home when unwell to avoid spreading infection.

Sir Ashley said in hindsight, he could "almost chuckle" at how "obsessed about the touching of things and hand hygiene" everyone was, not yet realising Covid-19 spread through the air.

"What Covid has done, has really made us relook at the whole aerosolisation of viruses and actually they spread through the air. That's how people were being infected in large part.

"So, gosh, we learned a lot. But, you know, one of the reasons we did do well is we did keep watching what was happening overseas. We were open to learning, we were open to changing tech if we needed to very quickly."

New Zealand's approach saved around 20,000 lives.

"We could see what was happening in the UK and northern Italy, in the USA. I was talking to one of our business leaders last week who was in Seattle at the time - he said they were locked down for a year, and every day all you could hear was sirens going to pick up people who had died.

"So what we were adamant we wanted to do whatever we needed to do to avoid the worst of it while we could.".

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