Australian coronavirus restrictions: What is expected to be lifted last

Experts have predicted what will be some of the last restrictions to be lifted, such as family dinners and schools opening, as Australia moves to end the COVID-19 lockdown.

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The family dinner could be one of the first social gatherings allowed as we come out of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Epidemiologists advising the federal government said the best approach to ending the lockdown may be lifting one restriction at a time – like allowing extended family gatherings.

Epidemiologists Dr Kathryn Snow and Professor James McCaw from the University of Melbourne have predicted after dinners – schools opening and relaxing restrictions on public transport would follow to test whether it leads to the infection spreading.

Foreign travel, mass gatherings, large conferences and weddings will be the last restrictions to be lifted as Australia moves to end the lockdown.

However, the experts have also warned even though we appeared to be close to eradicating the virus in Australia, the outcome was not guaranteed as there may be many asymptomatic cases we have not detected and eradication was a matter of luck.

Professor McCaw and Dr Snow agreed small gatherings of extended families had a lower risk of spreading COVID-19 and could be allowed early on as the lockdown was eased.

“I think these sorts of very small groups, repeated week-to-week type interactions … if they are well managed and … (cancelled) if someone’s got a sniffle, there is a good argument that these things should be able to go ahead especially when community prevalence is low,” Professor McCaw said.

“I think these are the sorts of things we all crave.”

Dr Snow agreed these type of gatherings were “on the lower risk end of the spectrum” when compared to a large wedding.

However, they cautioned if they were allowed some elderly people would catch COVID-19 and die in the same way as happens with influenza.

“It is important to be in mind when it does occur it’s not necessarily anybody did anything wrong … this is an infectious disease that has evolved to exploit the way we interact with each other,” Dr Snow said.

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She said she did not want people to feel guilt or blame if they transmitted the infection to others nor should they be victimised by society or the media.

The idea we should end the lockdown for young people and lock away the elderly and vulnerable so we could get the economy moving was rejected by Dr Snow as an “awful thing to contemplate”.

It was wrong to think, given the experience of Italy and the US, young people were not hospitalised with the virus, she said.

And if the virus was allowed to rip through younger people, hospitals would become overwhelmed.

This would lead to compromised care of car accident victims, people with burst appendix, anaphylaxis would not get treated and mothers could die in childbirth, she said.

The lifting of restrictions may also vary among Australia’s states and even between regions within the states, the experts told an Australian Science Media Centre briefing.

There are indications the virus is under control in Western Australia and South Australia with no new cases reported over several days but it is still a small problem in Sydney.

However, we must be aware that in regional areas like Cairns with smaller medical workforces even a small number of infections can be devastating.

In that town, one infection took six health workers out of action Dr Snow said.

Before the restrictions can be lifted Australia needs more chemical reagents for mass testing and a robust surveillance system to track any hidden cases of the virus and get it under control if there is an outbreak, the experts said.