Ardern urged to review New Zealand Covid measures after election landslide

Veteran epidemiologist calls for review, and openness to adopting measures suggested by political rivals, now that voters have given PM a mandate

Jacinda Ardern won New Zealand's election with a commanding majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist is exhorting the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinise the coronavirus response by her government and officials, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents before Saturday's vote.

New Zealand has shown it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see we've got these blind spots and we need to have no blind spots," said Nick Wilson, a University of Otago epidemiologist. This is such an unforgiving disease and very few countries are doing it right so we need to smarten up our act quite substantially."