The plan for Australia to truly “live” with COVID-19 as an endemic disease, rather than die with it, is taking shape.
Vaccination targets that will make widespread lockdowns less likely have been announced as part of the so-called national plan. And no doubt Australians look forward to living with greater freedoms.
But to do so requires thinking about what we need to do as we reach various vaccination targets, not only what we will be able to avoid — such as widespread lockdowns. So it was comforting to hear Prime Minister Scott Morrison say on Friday that the national plan involves vaccination and a range of sensible public health measures:
It isn’t just vaccination, public health social measures — the sort of things like distancing and things like that … that doesn’t stop when we hit 70%. People don’t stop getting vaccinated when you hit 70% or at 80%. It keeps going up and you keep having other sensible, commonsense precautions in place. Now if you do none of those things, well, of course you put, you put the community at great risk. But that’s not what the national plan suggests, and to suggest that that’s what the national plan is would be a complete misreading of that.
Vaccines-plus is exactly what the recently formed OzSAGE group advocates. By “plus” we mean testing, contact tracing and non-pharmaceutical strategies such as ventilation/filtration and masks. In the medium term these will be necessary to fight the Delta variant. And they may need to be scaled up or down in future depending on the severity of the epidemic.
Living with occasional outbreaks
It’s clear that COVID is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up the very significant gains won in 2020. Even if we can’t eliminate it, we can control it.
At the moment this requires vaccines-plus and booster shots to maintain immunity within the community. The development of mRNA vaccines has been a spectacular achievement — but progress and innovation has not stopped with the advent of the current generation of vaccines. If anything it is accelerating.
In future we may well have vaccines that are even more effective than those available today. They might specifically target variants, or be designed to protect against a number of coronaviruses — a universal vaccine. Boosters or new vaccine products may provide longer-lasting immunity.
Leave no one behind
Vaccine targets should be met for all sub-groups of the population, and we must be cognisant of structural and social disadvantage. The groups include all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, residents of remote and regional Australia, and other high-risk and disadvantaged groups.
These groups are often more at risk of contracting COVID (due to participating in essential work, or living in crowded housing) and are at higher risk of having severe disease (due to higher rates of comorbid conditions or other clinical vulnerabilities). Yet because of challenges accessing quality medical care or lower levels of health literacy, they have lower vaccination rates. Unless more is done to ensure higher rates they are likely to bear the greatest burden of COVID when we start to “live” with the disease.
While vaccination is not available yet for all children under 12, we have outlined a series of steps to protect them and make schools safe while they await vaccination.
Protecting the health system
Australia has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. But COVID case numbers are already putting it under significant strain. This is true in New South Wales, where active cases are highest.
But the Victorian healthcare system is also under strain. More than 90% of ICU beds in Victoria are full; the impact of more patients needing ICU care due to community transmission will challenge an already struggling system.
OzSAGE plans to announce some strategies essential to preventing the loss of health workers and protecting hospitals and their patients in cities and regional areas.
2022 and beyond
As Australia reopens we need to do so safely and from a position of strength — we need to ensure that vulnerable people are not left behind.
Since the federal government acknowledged its missteps with buying and rolling out vaccines, vaccination has rightly received a great deal of focus. It is vital — but it’s not enough. It is necessary — but it’s not sufficient. Vaccination lays the groundwork for a more normal 2022 — but it doesn’t ensure it.
Yet another commenter ostentatiously displaying obeisance to morrison. How we fawn on power!
For their information, as Australia reopens we will under morrison do so without safety, with vulnerable people left behind. Exactly as morrison has done all the way through, not just during this pandemic. morrison’s misgovernment has done no more planning for the future than it did with the vaccine fiasco. Our problem; his focus is always always only on finding plausible excuses.
“In future we may well have vaccines that are even more effective than those available today.”
Yes, that is possible. Or we may have covid variants that are more effective than those available today, with increased transmissability, nastier infections, increased mortality and better ability to overcome vaccines. Who knows? As Yogi Berra allegedly said, it’s hard to make predictions, particularly about the future.
Yogi also said “Boo Boo, you’ve tried to stop my brilliant ideas with common sense a thousand times. Has it ever worked?”
As Anastacia requested: “Why can’t we see the numbers? Why can’t we have an intelligent conversation about the reality of ‘opening up to covid’ without it being politicized?”
Scotty and Gladys only talk about the possibility of “overseas holidays and beach-side parties once 70% or 80% vaccination is reached at the end of this month”, and I guess they are talking to their constituents. But for the rest of us outside of the latte-sipping northern beaches, the recipe seems half-baked.
Nudging people or voters away from the short term to focus upon the sunlit uplands of 70-80% vaccination with trips, holidays etc.; possibly by Xmas in time for a post new year election campaign to commence, as though nothing has happened.
What a weird explanation of the national plan.
”…..of course you put, you put the community at great risk. But that’s not what the national plan suggests, and to suggest that that’s what the national plan is would be a complete misreading of that.”
Who suggested what or who suggests that that is suggested? Probably the PM.
”Even if we can’t eliminate it, we can control it.”
Good luck with that.
Everyone will infect everyone once it is out the bag. Control of this virus is a furphy if you open up, even with restrictions and vaccine passports. As if being doubly vaccinated means you will never be infectious. The whole perception is so wrong.
“At the moment this requires vaccines-plus and booster shots to maintain immunity within the community.”
Immunity? Current vaccines don’t make you immune, they give you protection.
Thank you Nancy and Richard! An excellent article. Your suggestion to ‘Leave No One Behind’ and meet vaccination targets for all ‘sub-groups’ is sound advice and makes sense from a scientific point of view as EVERYONE in the community can potentially contract and transmit Covid 19. Quite a few politicians and decision makers need to abandon their pre-conceived ideas that some groups in the community are more deserving of help or vaccination than others, or that a ‘them’ and ‘us’ approach will be sufficient. Like the expensive but universally necessary public health initiatives of providing clean drinking water and sanitation in London last century to control typhoid, the benefits to people and the economy were profound and a very serious health problem was largely eliminated.