Covid inquiry chair Professor Tony Blakely.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Peter de Graaf<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The inquiry came up with 39 recommendations and the findings would be made public when the report was released by the government, Blakely said.<\/p>\n In a media briefing to journalists, Blakely described New Zealand’s pandemic response as a “game of two halves”, where the country did well in the first year – but social cohesion began disintegrating after that.<\/p>\n Blakely said it was crucial to look at whether lockdowns and vaccine mandates were proportionate or went too far – even if it was difficult for leaders to assess that at the time.<\/p>\n “On that mandatory element – we really want, in the next pandemic similar to SARS-CoV-2, we really want to be in a position where we don’t need to use lockdowns as much or as stringently.”<\/p>\n He said while a majority of people were reasonably supportive of vaccines, some people were “adversely impacted” by vaccine mandates, causing them “huge pain”. He said a “substantial minority” of people lost trust in public institutions due to the policy.<\/p>\n He said vaccine mandates should only be used where “they have a meaningful and substantive benefit” without incurring the social harms.<\/p>\n Mandates for frontline healthcare workers, border workers and in prisons were justifiable, he said, because these were high-risk environments where a spread of the virus could have awful consequences.<\/p>\n “But as far as its reach beyond that, I think we’ve all learnt that that has to be done very cautiously – even if the majority of the population are in the mood, in the drive, of the view that it should be happening – is that the unintended consequences or some would say, perfectly anticipatable consequences for the minority are major – and they should be considered.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The head of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry has criticised the use of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, suggesting they were too broad and too harsh. Epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely says they should not be used as much or as stringently in the next pandemic. The report from the first phase of the Royal Commission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11977,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11975\/revisions\/11977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}