Japan should learn useful ideas from successful countries during the pandemic: a case of New Zealand.

The government of Japan has tried to address economic fallout from COVID‐19 pandemic, which has especially devastated tourism and leisure sectors as people have been asked to stay home, and the government subsidized a program promoting domestic tourism. However, many experts believe this Go‐To‐Travel campaign caused the novel coronavirus to spread nationwide based on epidemiological data and the campaign was suspended on December 28, 2020.

However, the government insists that it would resume the Go‐To‐Travel campaign in areas where the infection situation would be under control. Tourism business persons also keep persuading its resumption by quoting the remarks by expert committee of the government: There would be no evidence of infection risk by traveling.

Japan needs science to analyze how harm the Go‐To‐Travel campaign was. For example, New Zealand uses genomics to track all transmissions of SARS‐CoV‐2. As of April 2021, scientists there have already sequenced the genomes of all of around two thousand and five hundred cases, since New Zealand had its first case in February 2020.

Using the whole‐genome sequencing, they identified that 20 percent of all index cases led to a chain of transmission, with the origin for the cases was proven to come from North America. This conclusion is compatible with the fact that there are direct flights from North America into New Zealand and there were no travel restrictions at that time. Currently, by using robotics, the genome sequencing can be performed in less than 10 hours in New Zealand.

As a virus spreads, it undergoes mutations, which will be inherited by the next person. Thus, the viral RNA of each case contains the fingerprints of that of all previous cases and a genetic family tree can be developed for linking one case to another, revealing history of where it might have come from.

There are many more useful ideas that Japan should learn from New Zealand to improve life and care for our own people during the pandemic. One such idea is to provide online list of all essential workers for supporting their life and work. Before going to work in a hospital, a nurse with a card of essential worker can go shopping at a supermarket in a special morning time period with no ordinary people allowed to shop inside.

The growth rate of GDP for the July‐September quarter 2020 in New Zealand was 14% greater than the previous quarter, the highest growth rate ever. This marked a record recovery from the economic downturn caused by the new epidemic. On November 3, 2020, the WHO director announced in Twitter that "we all have a role to play in suppressing transmission and we have seen across the world that it's possible. We have released videos featuring multiple countries demonstrating their comprehensive responses to COVID‐19. This includes New Zealand."

New Zealand Prime Minister Ms. Jacinda Ardern responded that she will work with Joe Biden to help the U.S. fight COVID‐19 when he called her during the U.S. presidential campaign, saying “We are happy to work with any country to share our knowledge and data.” Japan should learn useful ideas from successful countries during the pandemic, when the ideas can be easily shared by international collaboration.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have stated explicitly that there are no conflicts of interest in connection with this article.