Calls for Mark McGowan to open up WA as new figures show vax effectiveness
As West Australian Premier Mark McGowan sets up his state as an “island within an island”, figures show vaccines are in fact making Covid less deadly.
NSW’s rapid uptake of vaccinations is already beginning to break the link between case numbers and deaths – undermining claims of hermit kingdom WA Premier Mark McGowan that “lots of people would die” if his state opened up its border to NSW once agreed targets were met.
On the weekend Mr McGowan appeared to blow up the national cabinet agreement which calls for state border restrictions to ease once 70 per cent of the eligible population has had the jab.
“The idea we would deliberately import the virus into Western Australia by dropping the border with a state like NSW would just mean lots of people would die and I’m not prepared to do that,” he said.
However, data suggests that even at Australia’s low but rapidly increasing rates of vaccination, the jabs are already making the virus less deadly and that Mr McGowan’s comments are more about deflecting attention from his state’s woeful health system and laggard vaccine rollout.
While two-thirds of eligible NSW residents have had their first dose of the vaccine, just under half of those in WA have had at least one jab.
And according to an analysis comparing current wave of coronavirus in NSW to last year’s deadly outbreak in Victoria, while the number of cases have this year been increasing far faster in 2021 than in 2020, the number of deaths this year is well done.
On Monday, the NSW outbreak crossed the 20,000 cumulative case mark, while the state overall reported 93 deaths from the current wave.
Victoria’s 2020 outbreak never reached the 20,000 mark, instead peaking at 18,610, but that wave led to at least 800 deaths.
“Primarily vaccination of the elderly is what is driving this” decrease in mortality, infectious disease specialist Dr Nick Coatesworth, who last year was one of the most public faces of the government’s efforts to reign in the pandemic as the then-Deputy Chief Medical Officer.
“That’s the power of the oldest-first strategy, and so it follows as the number of vaccinated younger people increases, the small risk of hospitalisation and ICE admission in those groups will become even smaller.”
What that means, says Dr Coatesworth, is the “principles of the plan” to re-open the country are “sound”.
“The trick is to maintain some level of restrictions as we get to that point to protect the health system, but restrictions with the aim of getting to zero will be of less and less value the higher the vaccination rates get.”
The analysis comes as McGowan, who last year declared his state “an island within an island” and said “we don’t want you, don’t come in” to Eastern Staters, was accused of leaving his population vulnerable by running down his health system.
From Wednesday, Perth public hospitals will be delaying some elective surgeries even with zero coronavirus cases to deal with.
Last December, the WA chapter of the Australian Medical Association declared the practice of “ambulance ramping”, where patients are held outside emergency departments unable to be treated, had reached crisis levels – suggesting that the state would be unable to cope with any outbreak of Covid.
“The public health system in WA is on its knees. It’s basically been chronically starved of funds for the last four years, and its capacity to deal with current demand is inadequate,” local AMA president Dr Mark Duncan-Smith was reported to have said Monday.
“This is not all of a sudden a problem. This is something that’s been brewing over the last four years due to chronic underfunding.”
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Originally published as Calls for Mark McGowan to open up WA as new figures show vax effectiveness
