A Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s management of Covid-19 will take place with the intention of preparing for future pandemics, the Government has announced.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this afternoon confirmed the inquiry would be chaired by Australian-based epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely alongside two others - former National Party minister Hekia Parata and former Treasury secretary John Whitehead.

Covid-19 Response Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall is appearing with Ardern to address media on the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

The Royal Commission would begin considering evidence from February 1, 2023, and the report must be delivered by June 26, 2024.

The pandemic’s impact on people’s lives was among the main reasons a Royal Commission was necessary.

The purpose of the inquiry was to “strengthen Aotearoa New Zealand’s preparedness for, and response to, any future pandemic by identifying those lessons learned from New Zealand’s response to Covid-19″, according to a summary of the inquiry’s terms of reference that was approved today by Cabinet.

The inquiry’s scope included the “legislative, regulatory, and operational settings” necessary to support New Zealand’s public health response, the communication and engagement with people and communities to act in support of public health outcomes and the settings needed to ensure the continued supply of goods and services required to enable people to isolate or otherwise take protective measures.

Also included were the settings required to support New Zealand’s immediate economic response to a future pandemic, the decision-making structures that might be used during an extended pandemic, consideration of Māori interests consistent with the Te Tiriti o Waitangi and consideration of the impact on essential workers and populations and communities that may be disproportionally impacted by a pandemic.

There were several aspects considered not within the inquiry’s scope, including clinical decisions made by clinicians or public health authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, how and when measures in response to Covid-19 were implemented in particular situations and vaccine efficacy.

It would also not analyse particular decisions taken by the Reserve Bank’s independent monetary policy committee during the Covid-19 pandemic.

When asked why the Reserve Bank was excluded from the inquiry, Ardern said monetary policy was included generally but the Bank’s independent committee wasn’t in scope.

Ardern’s interpretation was that monetary policy decisions “broadly speaking” were included in the inquiry when facing questions on why the Bank’s monetary policy committee was not included in the scope and decisions made by the committee influenced the Government’s response.

Ardern said the scope of the inquiry was “wide-ranging” including the border, community care, and quarantine, among other aspects.

The elimination strategy would also be analysed.

The inquiry would consider the “strategies, settings, and measures” that were in place between February 2020 and October 2022.

Verrall said the vaccine mandates were within the scope of the inquiry under the public health aspects, along with public health messaging that would hopefully identify whether the mandates were necessary.

“It had been over 100 years since we experienced a pandemic of this scale, so it’s critical we compile what worked and what we can learn from it should it ever happen again,” Ardern said.

“A Royal Commission of Inquiry is the highest form of public inquiry and is the right thing to do, given the Covid-19 emergency was the most significant threat to the health of New Zealanders and our economy since World War II.”

Ardern said when it came to individual decision-making that came down to a personal level, that would not be included because it needed to be learned broadly what worked and what didn’t to take those lessons into the response of a future pandemic.

“Our job is to maintain trust and confidence in Governments,” Ardern said, noting the inquiry was one way to do so.

The announcement comes as 34,528 new community cases of Covid-19 were reported in the past week and 40 deaths were attributed to the virus, the Ministry of Health published today.

As of yesterday, there were 3900 reported cases, and the seven-day rolling average stood at 4926 - the highest counts seen since August.

Ardern stated that New Zealand’s response has been thoroughly scrutinised, claiming that 75 reviews on various aspects of the response have been conducted since 2020.

“That time is now”, Ardern said about the need for an inquiry.

Minister of Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti lauded Blakely’s “extensive” understanding of public health in her praise of the team leading the inquiry.

“[Blakely] has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead this work,” she said.

“Hekia Parata and John Whitehead will add expertise and bring useful perspectives on the economic response and the response for Māori.”

‘A great opportunity to be better prepared’

Professor Michael Baker – the Otago University epidemiologist who was a key proponent of New Zealand’s elimination strategy – was “delighted” to see the commission announced.

Baker, who’d been calling for a Royal Commission since the early stages of the pandemic, saw the inquiry as an effective way to evaluate our response – and learn from it.

He was particularly encouraged that a focus would be on making New Zealand more resilient to future events.

”No one doubts the momentous scale of the pandemic and our response, but Covid-19 is still with us, and will be for the foreseeable future,” he said.

”The risk of pandemic is also rising for a lot of reasons – including the potential for bioterrorism – so the more we can learn from this, the better.

”This is a great opportunity for all of us to be better prepared.

“When Covid-19 first hit New Zealand, it found our country under-equipped to meet the threat, with a playbook that had been designed for an influenza pandemic. That was despite warnings from public health experts that we weren’t ready.

With our window to ditch a flawed “suppression” strategy in favour of all-out elimination fast closing, the Government changed tack and ordered a nationwide lockdown in late March, 2020.

Modelling later revealed that delaying that move much longer would have made elimination far harder to achieve.

The decision also likely saved thousands of lives.

Over the pre-Omicron period, New Zealand had minus 215 excess deaths per million, which equated to around 1103 fewer people dying than in a scenario in which the Covid-19 crisis never happened.

Otago University researchers have calculated that, if we’d experienced a similar per capita excess mortality rate with other jurisdictions, New Zealand may have seen 1856 extra deaths (Japan), or 2127 (Taiwan), 2577 (Australia), 3798 (Singapore) or 5167 (South Korea).

Remarkably, there were only nine jurisdictions on the planet which had recorded negative cumulative excess mortality for that pandemic period - of which New Zealand was the largest.

With elimination now well behind us, Baker said New Zealand needed a “coherent strategy” as Covid-19 became endemic – something he expected the commission to address.

”We need to be assembling all of the evidence and asking, what strategic setting do we need now?” he said.

”And I’d say that evidence is still suggesting we need a suppression approach to help keep case numbers down.”