An expert on bioethics says there's no right way of responding to COVID-19, but it's vital that the Government has good processes in place to make decisions.
Experts and governments around the world have disagreed on the best course of action required to stop the deadly disease spreading, and with little precedent to draw on everyone is essentially in uncharted territory, says Dr Ben Gray, of Otago University's department of primary health care and general practice.
"The problem here is that we are dealing with a very complex situation for which there is no road map," Dr Gray told Newshub.
"We can't analyse this problem and say 'this is the right thing to do'. That's well exemplified by how different the approaches of lots of different countries have been - from Sweden, which is keeping its schools open, to China, which has done a remarkable job of controlling its population to behave and prevent spread, to Britain and the United States where they don't seem to have been able to control significant spread and of course to the chaotic situation in places like Italy."
Decisions need to be made quickly even when there are many variables and a lack of concrete information, says Dr Gray.
"It's all very well to say in retrospect we should have done something else but we can only make a call on the information that we've got now at this particular time and keep evaluating."
One of the biggest ethical dilemmas governments face, says Dr Gray, is how to allocate resources - the more effort and resources that go into the fight against COVID-19, the less there is for other medical issues.
"It's very difficult because if we put all our resources into addressing the problems of the coronavirus we are causing harm. A whole lot of people have had their elective surgery planned and that has been cancelled - and some of that surgery is life-saving surgery. There are people who are awaiting operations for conditions for which if they don't get operated on at some point it may lead to them dying," he says.
"The difficult is how we balance those unmeasured risks of not doing those things versus the unmeasured risk of not responding to the virus."
Because it's not clear-cut and there are no correct decisions, Dr Gray says it's vitally important that the right processes are followed when deciding what to do.
"If there isn't a right answer the process by which we decide to do something is the thing that gives us the best handle on whether we're doing this well," says Dr Gray. "That requires the Government to listen to advice, to take feedback, to consider other options, to be very clear about why they are making particular decisions and to be open to considering those decisions."
So far New Zealand has 1106 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19, with one death related to the virus.
