"We definitely weren’t planning to do this work! I ran some models in early March 2020. I could see from the size and speed of the pandemic that there was no way we were going to spend our travel budget that year. We decided to repurpose it and stood up a team of about 20 people to work on the response straight away."

Shaun says the vision for Te Pūnaha Matatini had always been to create and foster inclusive, novel and broad collaborations. "Our centre of research excellence focusses on complex systems. As these show up in some way in every discipline, I thought there was value in learning from how other disciplines approach them. We reached out to the humanities as well as other sciences, and created an inclusive environment that built diversity in gender and ethnicity."

"Because of this diverse community, we were often able to anticipate policy needs during the COVID-19 response before our models became crucial for decision-making. Our strong connections with policy as well as access to different people and knowledge systems definitely helped inform and steer our work."

One modelling project focussed on the infection and fatality rates for Māori and Pasifika people. Although the data was sparse, the model was able to show that because of some health conditions that tend to be more prevalent in these communities, they were much more at risk than other segments of the population.

"COVID-19 could have been really devastating for kuia and kaumātua if it ever got into a Māori community. The iwi road blocks were very much informed by new evidence such as ours as well as the community’s own memories of the 1918 pandemic."

The modelling and associated research continues to provide insights and inform decisions about vaccines, risks from new variants and options to relax border controls over time. Te Pūnaha Matatini has also created an open-source, national epidemic model and policy simulator based on the latest technology, research and data.