The Isle of Man has featured in a double page spread in New Zealand’s Waikato Times newspaper, where the two jurisdictions’ approaches to the pandemic are contrasted.

Headlined ’Notes from a Small Island’, the piece describes New Zealand’s daily Covid case numbers as now ’mirroring those of a tiny island on the other side of the world’.

The article attributes the Isle of Man’s geographical isolation as allowing it to ’pretty much forge its own way in the world’.

It goes on to note how it also, like New Zealand, forged its own path through the pandemic - with us seeking to eliminate Covid and having ’successfully stamped out three incursions’.

’Then, things changed,’ the reporter wrote - referring to the significant shift in the Manx government’s approach when it announced in July that it would change from a strategy of eliminating the virus to one of mitigation and ’learning to live with it’.

This shared policy of elimination from the outset of the pandemic means that ’the Isle of Man experience will look familiar to New Zealanders’.

However, last month New Zealand also abandoned its strategy of seeking to eliminate the virus amidst an outbreak of the Delta variant.

Mirroring the moves of our government, the country announced that it would now be learning to live with the virus and reopening in phased stages.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attributed this to the ’tentacles’ of Delta being harder to shake, with the variant accelerating a reopening that was always planned to happen eventually - just as it was here in the island with the government’s exit strategy.

The regional newspaper, which is read by around 45,000 people a day, spoke to Noble’s Hospital’s emergency department consultant Dr Tim Kerruish, himself a New Zealander.

Dr Kerruish said the island’s daily case figures ’simply don’t make the kind of splash’ as they do in NZ.

The article noted the 106 new active cases counted here on October 21 - which was the first time our daily case figures had surpassed 100 since August.

October was also the month where New Zealand again broke the 100 daily case mark, but this was the interruption of a much longer streak of low community transmission - with the country having not seen over 100 cases in 24 hours since April 2020.

TRAGEDY

And like with the Abbotswood tragedy here, New Zealand’s deadliest Covid cluster also took place in a care home - with 12 deaths.

Even mentioned is the incident of the Scottish man who allegedly jet skied here from Scotland in December, breaching lockdown restrictions to visit his Manx girlfriend - to illustrate the point that ’Yes, it’s an island but it’s certainly not as remote as New Zealand’.

The paper, based in Hamilton in the country’s North Island, describes the Isle of Man’s Covid journey as being ’intrinsically linked to the UK’s’, with long-term elimination being ’simply not realistic for a tiny island hemmed in between Ireland and the British mainland’.

It noted the success of our vaccine rollout - and attributed the fact we were able to achieve 70% first dose coverage so early on to the government’s decision to have a longer gap between doses.

However, the article concluded that ’comparisons can only go so far’ between the two countries.

Dr Kerruish said that the island makes for an excellent comparison with rural or small-town New Zealand.

But the paper notes that the island doesn’t have a densely populated, underprivileged urban area like South Auckland where the delta variant had ’ruthlessly taken hold’ in the latest outbreak.

Dr Kerruish said that he and his family are still being cautious when they go out, and that he was concerned about a winter wave facing the island - as people cram into pubs and Christmas parties.

’If we were unvaccinated it’d be a disaster, we’d have been overwhelmed,’ Dr Kerruish concluded.

The double page spread about the island in New Zealand’s Waikato TIMES newspaper