NZs isolation policy couldn't keep out omicron. The upside was, by the time omicron showed up and started spreading around the population, most people were vaccinated, and deaths due to the original strain were very low (I think it was like 50 deaths? 150 maybe?). The country also had most of 2020 and early 2021 totally COVID free, so businesses like cafes, retail, didn't have as much of a shock
Seems basically impossible to untangle — they loosened restrictions and hit high levels of vaccination at the same time as Omicron arrived, right? NZ’s isolation policy became pretty ineffective when they stopped doing it, of course, haha.
(Kiwi here) I suspect our isolation policy would have continued for quite a bit longer if we never saw Omicron. The failure of lockdowns to contain it (at least at the compliance levels at the time, high relative to US but lower than our previous lockdowns) meant it no longer made sense.
To date NZ has suffered just 2,212 covid deaths (just 0.0004% of population).
