NZ tempts Covid-19 fate by not introducing masks - researchers

New Zealand is the only OECD member state that has had no community transmission for more than 28 days, and the low Covid-19 death rate here (4 deaths per 1 million population) puts New Zealand in a uniquely favourable position the report says. But they warn there are still gaps in the government's response, and it should put more systems in place to quickly stamp out transmission of any cases that do arise. New Zealand was the only country left that had not included a requirement to wear masks in public in its pandemic control plans. 'If we had masks built into alert level two so people had to wear masks on buses and trains and potentially when going to the supermarket and so on, that could help us avoid a lockdown in the future, so some smart thinking is really urgently required for the alert level system to be upgraded, given the evidence that masks are very effective. 'I think it's just complacency - we have succeeded with community transmission being eliminated, and they just think that that's good enough, but it's not. 'We know that border failures can occasionally occur, that quarantine failures can occur. So we need to build in all the systems to hep us deal with an outbreak situation.