Australia’s biggest COVID-19 failures exposed

Experts say our failures in the fight against coronavirus went way beyond the Ruby Princess and hotel quarantine debacles.

It was like something from a movie. Specifically an Avengers movie, when the closing credits reveal the megavillain who will dominate the next film.

And so it was with COVID-19. 2020’s monster was hatched in the very final hours of 2019, when China finally alerted the World Health Organisation to a new respiratory virus spiralling out of control in Wuhan.

Twelve months on, the virus has wrought devastation worse than a Loki or a Thanos. Deaths nearing two million. Economies decimated. Commerce and culture at a virtual standstill.

Australia has escaped the worst, but it hasn’t escaped. More than 900 people have died.

Epidemiologists who spoke to News Corp for this story pointed to a range of failures that made the Australian outbreak worse than it could have been. Over and above the well-documented mistakes surrounding the Ruby Princess in Sydney, botched hotel quarantine in Melbourne and more recent outbreak in Sydney, they pointed to other failures, lancing some of the self-congratulatory narratives we have told ourselves in Australia this year.

Flights going to and from Melbourne to Sydney were cancelled with the latest COVID outbreak in Sydney’s Northern beaches. Picture: David Crosling

Coronavirus quarantine hotels for returned overseas travellers to Victoria. Police and PSO's outside Novotel Melbourne at South Wharf. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Matray

While governments have been lauded for making bold moves, the experts pointed to indecisiveness, confused messaging and a lack of transparency. And while the compliant behaviour of Australians has been held up as a fundamental reason for our success, the experts said there were plenty of examples when everyday Aussies did exactly the wrong thing.

“In Melbourne you had people who had infection, and when the Defence Force knocked on their doors, 30 per cent of them weren’t home,” said Professor Peter Collingnon, infectious diseases expert from the ANU Medical School. “That was a big issue. Those who are infected have got to be kept away from others, by whatever means you choose. To me that was a major problem.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is updated on the steps being taken to control the coronavirus at the National Incident Room of the Department of Health in Canberra. Picture: AAP

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist with the University of NSW, said that while there were individuals who behaved badly, the critical factor was that collectively, Australians did the right thing.

“When we nationally come together we are very reasonable people,” she said.

“Our personality is more ‘we’ than ‘me’. There are a lot of countries that are not. We know that’s a big problem in the US, but there are many countries in Europe, the UK included, that are individual-focused, not tribe-focused. I hate to use the word ‘Karen,’ the occasional person who goes ‘I don’t have to wear a mask, it’s my human right,’ but they’re few and far between in Australia.”

Professor Mary-Louise McLaws said shutting the border to everyone sooner should not have been politically ‘unthinkable’. Picture: Justin Lloyd

A greater failure, Prof McLaws said, was our tardiness in shutting international borders.

While the government was applauded for taking the unprecedented step of stopping arrivals from China, and then other nations that were experiencing outbreaks, it “shouldn’t have been unthinkable,” Prof McLaws said, to shut the border to all.

“There was a window of opportunity that we could have closed the border to every group, and had people come in and quarantine – and we would not have had such a big problem. We still would have had clusters, we still would have low level community spread, but it wouldn’t have been as big.”

When Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton told a press conference on the eve of the Melbourne Grand Prix that he was shocked to be there, given the worsening outbreak, he was demonstrating wisdom that the government lacked, Prof McLaws said.

British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton at a press conference ahead of the Melbourne Grand Prix. He has since had COVID-19. Picture: Getty

The federal authorities at the time were relying on modelling, rather than anticipating behaviour, she said.

“I was absolutely terrified about what this meant,” Prof McLaws said. “The Chinese are highly sophisticated urbane people, and when it’s Chinese New Year they buy tickets all over the world to visit their friends, family and enjoy life. (For Australia) to close to China failed to understand that they were in Tehran, in Italy, in America, everywhere.

“You don’t use a model to work out who you close the border to; you use the understanding of where this virus can get to. It hops on aeroplanes. Fortunately the government realised very rapidly their error and closed the border to everybody.”

COVID-19 hit our airports and grounded planes. Picture: Adam Yip

But other governmental mistakes were to follow, at both the federal and state level.

For Professor Raina Macintyre, also an epidemiologist at UNSW, a big failure was the slow acceptance of the fact the virus could be transmitted through the air.

“(This was) reflected in confusing messaging, initially actively discouraging mask use, to later very qualified and reluctant mask recommendations – except during the second wave in Victoria, which could not be controlled by handwashing and social distancing. The reluctance to accept airborne transmission of SARS CoV 2 has led to us not availing ourselves of every possible measure to prevent and control it,” she said.

A man is seen with plastic wrapped around his face to protect himself from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) at the Brisbane domestic airport terminal in Brisbane. Picture: AAP

Brendan Murphy was Australia’s Chief Medical Officer during the first wave of the outbreak. His reluctance to recommend mask usage – partly based on fears of stocks running out when they would be most needed – has been criticised by some experts. Picture: AAP

Victoria’s various failures to control the virus have been well-documented, although the hectoring obsession with the mismanagement of hotel quarantine somewhat distracted from the arguably more critical deficiencies in the state’s contact tracing system.

Prof Collingnon said the Andrews government in Victoria was “less transparent than other states”.

“You might remember the Cedar Meats outbreak. They didn’t name the institution involved. Very early on, there was a lack of putting the information out,” he said.

Visitors, contractors and staff have their temperatures taken at Cedar Meats after a COVID-19 cluster forced the processing centre to temporarily close. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Victoria’s testing also lagged behind early states, at least early on – by the end of March it had carried out 42,000 tests, compared to 47,000 in Queensland and 99,000 in NSW. Such failings may have doomed later efforts to control the outbreak in the Garden State.

Associate Professor Hassan Vally, epidemiologist with La Trobe University, said “efforts to localise the public health response” in Victoria as the second wave emerged – with testing blitzes, and the lockdown of individual public housing towers and suburbs – were all for nought.

Life in lockdown. A lone woman is seen looking out the window of her apartment at the North Melbourne Public housing flats on July 5 in Melbourne. Before long all Victorians would be in a similar situation. Picture: Getty

“My recollection is just how quickly things got away from us, and those valiant efforts to avoid a complete lockdown of the whole state – ultimately they failed,” he said. “There was just too much of a seeding of cases throughout the community and it became very clear very quickly that transmission was getting away from us, and something more drastic needed to be done.”

But the country’s single most shocking failure during the pandemic occurred early in the morning of March 19, when 2700 passengers were allowed to disembark from the cruise ship Ruby Princess – many with COVID-19 symptoms – when it docked at Sydney’s Circular Quay.

A spokesperson for Shine Lawyers, who are mounting a class action case over the debacle, told News Corp more than 700 positive cases of coronavirus could be traced back to that ship, and 28 deaths.

More than 900 people have registered their interest in the class action so far, and the action was still open for other passengers to join, the spokesperson said.

Passengers disembark from the Ruby Princess at Overseas Passenger Terminal on February 08, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. Picture: Getty

Assoc Prof Vally was philosophical as the virus’s first year was drawing to a close.

He likened the pre-COVID study of pandemics to “planning for a comet to hit the Earth”.

“You kind of know it’s a possibility, but you think it’s not going to happen,” he said.

The experience of short-term pandemics like SARS, MERS and ebola probably engendered confidence that COVID-19 would be something similar, rather than the world-changer it became, he said.

“Without being too clichéd I think we’ve learnt lessons every single day that we have experienced this pandemic, and there’s been some big lessons we’ve learnt the hard way: hotel quarantine failures, the Ruby Princess, aged care outbreaks,” he said.

“The thing about this virus … it exposes the weaknesses and fault lines in society, and at the end of all of this, if we get a better aged care sector, if we look after our casualised work force better, if we look after mental health better … if we address all of those issues because the virus and the pandemic have shone a light on the problems in our society, maybe that’s going to be an invaluable outcome.”