600 days of Battle

Abstract

According to Silva (2020b), among 108 well–evaluated countries, NZ was the eighth best nation during 180 days of battle against Covid-19, and one year after that publication, on 29th October, 2021, about 5,004,0026 lives were officially lost by Covid–19, while NZ only reported 28 deaths (WORLDOMETERS, 2021). To complement Gomes da Silva (2020) and Silva (2020a; 2020b; 2021a; 2021b) researches, the main aim of this article is to investigate the NZ performance and management practices used to save lives against Covid-19. It uses an online questionnaire with descriptive, bibliographic and documentary approaches to identify management practices, including cultural practices and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) adopted during the pandemic. The main performance is found by using the Fatality Total Index and Resilience Index to compare NZ's performance with 43 countries during 600 days of battle. As a result: 1) among the 44 countries, NZ was the most resilient and the second (FTI600=0.0165) best-best performer, after China (0.0066); 2) among 131 respondents living in NZ, 34.35% don´t believe that cultural practices are decisive for the low rate of Covid–19 death, while 65.65% believe in that. From those that believe, the most decisive cultural practices were wash hands, not hug in public, and not shake hands; 3) for 131 respondents, the ten main policy measures adopted by the National Government that saved lives against the virus are international travel control, public event cancellations, restriction on internal movement, public information campaigns, schools closures, support the expansion of testing system, wage subsidies for workers, workplace closures, increase the medical and personal equipment capacity, and effective public-private collaboration. At the final, lessons are provided from 360 policies, measures, programs, projects, acts/regulations, innovative products/services identified, with the majority led by the Public Sector (66.7%), followed by Corporations (11.4%), Universities (8.9%), Others (8.3%), and Startups (4.7%).