NSW road map out of lockdown compared to US, Denmark, UK

There’s no ‘Freedom Day’ and restrictions are sticking around without an end date after the 80 per cent road map was less than envisaged. Here is how NSW compares to the rest of the world.

Sydney’s so-called road map to reopening will leave Australia’s biggest city stuck in the slow lane, with not even the Doherty Institute’s ambitious goal of 80 per cent vaccination enough to fully win us back our freedom.

Instead, Premier Gladys Berejiklian made good on her promise that there would be no “freedom day”, announcing Monday that with 80 per cent of over-16s double dosed a swag of restrictions would remain in place, from a cap of 10 vaccinated visitors to the home to 4sq m limits on indoor hospitality.

“I don’t want to be a party pooper but I’ve said let’s not think about this as a freedom day but let’s think about this as a staged reopening to getting back to normal,” she said.

And while the announced road map does provide for a further winding back of ­restrictions in December, ­including allowing the ­unvaccinated to participate in more activities, it also foreshadows ongoing restrictions and localised lockdowns for years.

NSW residents also potentially face years of checking in to shops and venues after the Premier contradicted Customer Services Minister Victor Dominello, who was quoted on the weekend saying that QR codes and vaccine passports would be over once we reached “saturation levels” of vaccine coverage.

“Notwithstanding that these are my babies, I will be the first to turn them off,” Mr Dominello told local media.

“They are only to be used in pandemic situations.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned people against thinking of October 11 as freedom day. Picture: Getty Images

However, suggesting that the government is not prepared to treat Covid as endemic, rather than pandemic, as much of the rest of the world is doing, Ms Berejiklian said Monday that “QR codes could be with us (as long as) Covid is”.

This despite the agreed ­national cabinet plan being to “manage Covid-19 consistent with public health management of other diseases”.

However a look around the world at places like New York, the UK, and Denmark shows that Sydney’s new “normal” will not be so normal after all – though they might point a way forward for our overly-cautious policy makers.

NEW YORK CITY

The Big Apple is back.

Having experienced a horror start to the pandemic, made worse by government orders shipping positive Covid patients to nursing homes, New York City began planning to re-open the city as early as June, 2020, long before the ­development of vaccines.

While there were strict limits on indoor dining for much of the pandemic, through the winter of 2020-2021, hospitality continued to trade, with restaurants creating sometimes quite elaborate makeshift table areas carved out of streets with concrete bollards.

Notably, while the city experienced a second wave of deaths that peaked at about 100 a day earlier this year, this was a fraction of the 700 or more lives lost daily at the worst of the pandemic.

The Tony Awards on Monday was a sign as to how life has returned to normal in New York. Picture: Getty Images

Huge crowds have also returned to college football games.

Today, the city has vaccination rates lower than locked-down Sydney’s, but comparable fatality rates – even as most of the city gets back to business.

Restaurateur Keith McNally, who owns a number of the city’s most famous restaurants including Balthazar and Minetta Tavern, regularly posts reports of the recovery on his Instagram account.

One recent report he shared from one of his maître d’s tells the story: “Tonight was a very busy night from the start. Lots of walk ins throughout to go with the reservations we had.

“We ended up with a total of 580 covers, 310 reservations, 270 walk-ins, 58 no-shows and 6 cancellations.”

And all without a square- metre rule in sight.

UNITED KINGDOM

When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the UK would end all coronavirus restrictions on what quickly became known as “freedom day”, commentators and many epidemiologists were aghast.

“In the competition between cautious policy change and recklessness, the British government appears to have chosen recklessness,” wrote Australian epidemiologist and Oxford University professor David Hunter at the time, summing up the views of many.

However, in a country that had endured some of the highest casualty rates from the pandemic as well as some of the toughest lockdowns, the prospect of an end to the rolling nightmare was worth the risk.

And, contrary to those who thought that an end to restrictions would mean total disaster, cases rose but deaths stayed far lower through a wave of the Delta variant than they did during the worst of the earlier waves of the pandemic.

Crowds of people in restaurants and bars in London’s Soho district. Picture: Getty Images

Fans of Arsenal at a Premier League match between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Picture: Getty Images

Much of this is credited to a high rate of immunity in the population, with as many as 90 per cent of the population thought to have antibodies via vaccination or previous infection.

More important though is the change in attitude. Australian expats living in London remark that the local press barely covers coronavirus, while in Sydney it remains front-page news.

”It’s pretty much back to normal here," Londoner David Scullion said.

“The only thing different is travel in and out of the country and you’re supposed to wear a mask on the Tube, but it’s not the law anymore and lots of people don’t.”

DENMARK

Earlier this month Denmark took the extraordinary step of ending all pandemic restrictions – and getting to the stage envisioned by Australia’s own Doherty Institute modelling, which imagines that one day we too will live with the disease as we do with the flu and other illnesses.

With a population almost exactly that of Sydney, Denmark has had a relatively easy pandemic, suffering 2642 deaths.

Starting earlier this year, the country embarked on a program to see it out the other side of the pandemic, focusing on a vaccine program that concentrated on older and more vulnerable populations.

They also instituted a Coronapas, or coronavirus passport app, that showed the holder had either been vaccinated, been infected within the last three months (thus proving antibodies) or had recently had a negative test.

A crowd at a concert in Copenhagen. Picture: AFP

Experts say that high levels of social trust enabled the society to get there but that it is not impossible, even for Australia, where community spirit has been battered by extended lockdowns and state versus state bunfights.

“By end 2021, NSW should reach 90 per cent of eligible populations fully vaccinated (equating to more than 75 per cent total population),” infectious diseases physician Greg Dore of the UNSW’s Kirby Institute said.

“It would then be in a similar position to countries such as Denmark which has very safely removed almost all Covid restrictions.”