NSW Health scheme to bring back masks for Covid surge slammed

A leading professor of infectious diseases says that highly vaccinated NSW should not return to masks or density limits in anticipation of a Covid surge.

One of the world’s leading infectious diseases has slammed a NSW Health proposal to return to indoor masks and other pandemic restrictions, describing the idea as “fundamentally anti-vaccine.”

On Saturday it was reported that agency bureaucrats had recommended NSW return to indoor mask rules, density limits, bans on singing and dancing, and even a recommendation to return to working from home in anticipation of a rise in the number of Covid-19 cases.

However Dr Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at California’s Stanford University, said that such restrictions were not just pointless but sent the wrong message in a highly vaccinated society like Australia.

Stanford University infectious diseases specialist and professor of medicine Dr Jay Bhattacharya.

Mask rules may be reintroduced as Covid numbers rise again. Picture: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

“This is a fundamentally anti-vaccine message,” Dr Bhattacharya told Sky News Australia’s Outsiders Sunday morning.

“Basically, a very large fraction of the Australian population is vaccinated. The vaccine works well against severe disease and death, that’s why Australia has had so few disease deaths from Covid relative to much of Europe and the Americas – the vaccine has worked.”

“Why would you need to return to masks, which don’t work? Lockdowns which caused so much harm and actually don’t work very well?”

“I believe that is a flatly anti-vaccine message and those that (support such measures) are just being unprofessional.”

Dr Bhattacharya also said that public health officials risked further damaging public trust in calling for a return to measures that have proven to be less effective than initially promised.

“It just hasn’t worked out that way, they said just wear masks, the disease will stop spreading, even the vaccine – which I believe is very effective at preventing against severe disease – is not effecting in stopping the spread.”

“The blame lies with scientists who do not understand how society works or understand that you cannot structure society around the control of a single infectious disease for years and expect any good result.”

NSW’s Covid case numbers have routinely been above the 10,000 mark in recent days, but there has not been a subsequent spike in hospitalisations, with under 1,000 in hospital, down from a peak of 2,760 in late January.