Research Projects
Pandemic NZ
Learning lessons now for the future
PandemicNZ is a McGuinness Institute project that aims to help New Zealand prepare for future pandemics, as well as manage and learn from the current COVID-19 pandemic. It draws together early Institute publications as well as an increasingly comprehensive suite of research and publications into the current pandemic. See below for tables of publications and independent reports on pandemics.
Pandemics are not uncommon. The COVID-19 pandemic is the fifth global pandemic in just over a century. Previous pandemics began in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. When looking back over time, pandemics can be seen as part of the normal cycle of events: what the McGuinness Institute calls ‘The Long Normal’. Pandemics tend to be categorised as mild, moderate or severe. COVID-19 is a moderate pandemic.
On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was first notified about multiple cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause, circulating in Wuhan, China. On 11 January 2020, the first known death was confirmed. Nine days later, Thailand became the second country to record its first case of the coronavirus and, shortly afterwards, cases were recorded in Japan, South Korea and the United States. By 30 January 2020, over 10,000 cases had been reported globally and WHO declared a global health emergency. On 11 February 2020, WHO officially titled the coronavirus disease COVID-19. By 11 March 2020, there were over 118,000 recorded cases across 114 countries and WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
Latest publication
COVID-19 Nation Dates: A timeline of significant events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 pandemic
COVID-19 Nation Dates presents a timeline of significant events that have shaped the COVID-19 pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand.
We have endeavoured to create a comprehensive list of events; however, we may still have missed some events. We intend to publish a second edition in a twelve months‘ time once other changes become apparent. For this reason, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.
This book is available for purchase on the McGuinness Institute’s BigCartel store.
For bulk orders and bookseller information, please email us.
Lists of government and other relevant pandemic publications
Table 1: MOH pandemic publications
This table contains a list of Ministry of Health (MOH) pandemic publications on the MOH website since 2010.
Table 2: Independent reviews on the Government’s response to COVID-19
This table contains a list of reports, prepared by independent individuals or bodies.
Note:
* Titles marked with an asterisk indicate the report has been super-ceded and the report is now out of date.
# Titles marked with a hashtag indicate a soft copy of the report cannot be found.
Themes
The events have been grouped by themes. The list of themes are as follows:
- Aged residential care
- Alert level
- Border control [Note: the Trans-Tasman bubble and Pacific bubble are treated as separate themes]
- Community outbreak
- COVID-19 origins
- Elimination
- Financial support [Note: this includes the Wage Subsidy Scheme]
- Governance
- Health Care Services
- Māori
- Mental Health
- National reserve supply [Note: this includes the composition]
- Pacific bubble
- PPE
- Surveillance [Note: refers to MOHs review of the characteristics of the disease and the effectiveness of the response]
- Testing [Note: includes PCR and RAT testing]
- Track and tracing
- Trans-Tasman bubble
- Vaccination
- Traffic light
Table 1: MOH pandemic publications
Table 2: Independent reviews on the Government's response to COVID-19
Recent research
A Suppression Strategy: Living with COVID-19 in the Year 2022 (Version 7)
Discussion Paper 2021/03 – A COVID-19 Situational Report: Beyond Aotearoa New Zealand’s Fortress as at 1 September 2021
Think Piece 37 – The gap between doses matters!
Influenza Epidemic Commission, 1919
Past initiatives

SupplyNZ
In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the McGuinness Institute created SupplyNZ: Winning the war against COVID-19. While hopeful that New Zealand’s lockdown strategy would work, we felt it was important to build New Zealand’s connections and capabilities in case the nationwide lockdown was not enough to stop the spread of the virus, and resulted in gaps in supply chains.
We welcome makers, purchasers and suppliers of healthcare products as well as organisations or individuals with production capabilities (e.g. raw materials, bulk fabric or 3-D printing) and/or time to fill out the registration form to be placed on the SupplyNZ Register.
Assorted publications
See a selection of our latest research and publications related to CivicsNZ below.
Think Piece
Contributing Paper
Working Paper 2020/01
Working Paper 2020/06
Strategy
There are a wide range of variables that New Zealand needs to consider and seek to understand. This section contains our thinking and some probes through social media to understand what other people are thinking. As things are changing over time, we have provided a brief timeline to show the context of the publications below.

Press coverage
2020
Why we should stay at Level 4 (Newsroom, 20 April 2020)
RNZ Bulletin (RNZ, 2 April 2020)
Covid 19 coronavirus: Forty million masks on the way for frontline health workers (NZ Herald, 2 April 2020)
Covid-19: 41 million additional face masks coming for frontline health workers (RNZ, 2 April 2020)
Getting local companies to help make Covid-19 personal protective equipment (RNZ, 31 March 2020)
Sunday speaks to Wendy McGuinness, a NZ expert in supply chain during pandemics. How prepared are we for what’s to come? (TVNZ, 29 March 2020)
Covid-19 lockdown day 2: More cases and demand for protective clothing (RNZ, 27 March 2020)
Call for hospitals to release lists of protective equipment supplies (RNZ, 27 March 2020)
COVID-19 – Open letter to DHBs: please tell us what medical supplies you have (Newsroom, 26 March 2020)
COVID-19 – Urgent moves to build ventilators here (Newsroom, 19 March 2020)
COVID-19 – When ‘prudent over-reaction’ makes sense (Newsroom, 16 March 2020)
McGuinness Institute Press Releases
Letter to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons Commissioners and staff
(McGuinness Institute, 19 April 2023)
New non-government initiative aims to connect makers, suppliers and purchasers of healthcare equipment
(McGuinness Institute, 31 March 2020)
Open letter to DHBs (McGuinness Institute, 25 March 2020)