‘Delta usurped the one decision Australia thought we could control’ | marywardy
, Professor Bennett said there was still merit in reporting daily case numbers as NSW approaches higher levels of vaccination coverage.“Right now they are a predictor of what’s happening in hospitals and everyone still wants to know. I think if they did suddenly disappear, people would feel more anxious,” she said.“What you are managing then, at a state-level, is the disease, you are not managing every single infection,” she said.
“That becomes the domain of public health teams. And it could be a case of, if you catch it and you have been vaccinated, you won’t need to quarantine and that will be it.” She flagged that Australia would be unlikely to experience a UK-style Freedom Day. Instead, it was likely that Australia would live with certain restrictions, such as masks, as well as social distancing habits. Professor Bennett expected some parts of the country to watch on for the effects of reopening in the two most populous states.
“If we are to say the strategy of having zero cases is no longer an option: did we ever really think it was?”Professor Leeder agreed that vaccination rates had been accelerated by the introduction of Delta into the community, but said he believed an elimination strategy was never viable, or seriously on the table, despite the rhetoric of some state premiers, such as Western Australia’s Mark McGowan.
“If that was a strategy, it would need to be inclusive of the whole of the world, like we have done with smallpox. But we are nowhere near that; there is COVID everywhere around the world,” he added.
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