Top infectious disease experts warn that Australia’s “really poor” systems for collecting information on COVID-19 are harming our chances of preparing for the next wave of disease.
Some of the country’s most respected infectious disease experts say Australia must urgently establish a national surveillance system to improve how the country collects data on coronavirus.
Professor Sharon Lewin, head of Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said that while Australia fared better than many countries throughout much of the pandemic, the way it collected coronavirus data was far behind comparable nations such as the UK and United States. With Australia transitioning to living with coronavirus, abandoning measures such as contact tracing and mandatory mask wearing, University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor James McCaw said it was “as critical as ever” to understand how the virus was behaving.
Throughout the pandemic, Australia has relied heavily on the UK’s data system to forecast the potential outcomes of its own coronavirus waves.
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