At the beginning of this year, I was a hospital specialist, a medical school lecturer, a district health board member, and a mum, and I thought I knew what busy was. Then the COVID-19 outbreak started in Wuhan. Looking overseas, it was apparent that failing to contain the virus would lead to a catastrophic outbreak. Based on my experience with other infectious diseases, I knew our public health systems lacked the capacity to deal with the threat. I vividly remember when I realised how serious COVID was. I couldn't bear the thought of the deaths, I couldn't bear the thought of my friends in the hospital being overwhelmed, and I couldn't bear the thought of my daughter not seeing her grandparents again. I raised the alarm about the state of our contact tracing in early March, and kept up the pressure until I was asked to review the system. I argued for an outbreak plan that coordinated the efforts of our hard-working public health staff and information technology that joined up our fragmented system.