Australia covid lockdowns: Experts hope vaccinations rise amid new outbreaks

There could be a silver lining to the latest covid lockdowns in Australia, with experts hoping they will be the nudge more Aussies need to get the jab.

Experts are hoping Sydney’s first lockdown in seven months might be the push more Australians need to get vaccinated after the nation became a “victim of its own success”.

All of Great Sydney, including the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong are in lockdown as the highly-contagious Delta variant continues to spread across the region.

The stay-at-home orders will be in place for two weeks, until midnight on Friday, July 9, with residents only allowed to leave their homes for four essential reasons.

On Monday, NSW recorded 18 new covid cases, bringing the outbreak to 130 infections.

The outbreak comes as Greater Darwin, including the Palmerston and Litchfield regions, was plunged into a snap 48-hour lockdown over concerns with the spread of cases linked to a Central Australian mine.

Hundreds of people are pictured at Coogee Beach on the first day of a two week COVID-19 lockdown across Greater Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicholas Eagar

New restrictions have been imposed on people in Perth and the Peel region after a woman who visited a Sydney hotspot tested positive to the virus.

Vice President of the Australian Medical Association Dr Chris Moy told SBS News he hoped there was a silver lining to the latest outbreaks, with lockdowns prompting more people to get vaccinated.

“We’ve been the victims of our own success so far because to some degree there’s been a level of complacency and we’ve been living in a very gilded cage, a Truman Show, Jim Carrey-type world where we’ve really been very disconnected,” Dr Moy said.

“It’s been said we’ve been sitting ducks and we have – it’s been proven true.”

As vaccination rates rise across the US and UK, Dr Moy feared Australians had become “very insular” with their attitudes and hesitancy towards getting the jab.

“It’s been very much about individuals – why would I do it, why not let other people have it first, let them protect me – but really, we need to understand that the community spirit that we need to get through this lockdown also needs to transfer to people; seeing as a community the need to get vaccinated,” he said.

“I don’t think the communication has been adequate in terms of what it means for you as an individual to get vaccinated and what it means for the community as well.”

The line up is out the door at Coles as the Greater Darwin Area goes into a 48-hour lockdown. Picture: Glenn Campbell

Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout, Australia has administered 7,326,320 doses, with about three per cent of the adult population vaccinated.

Speaking on Sunday, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said demand for the vaccine had increased since the latest outbreak, but fears remained over limited supply, with many people forced to wait months to get their first dose.

“We have literally millions of people in NSW wanting the vaccine. The NSW government cannot control how many doses we get (and) I want to assure the community whenever we get doses, we get them in arms,” Ms Berejiklian said at Sunday’s press conference.

Professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Sydney, Angela Webster, hoped the latest lockdown would give complacent Aussies the nudge they needed to get the jab.

“The community has been a bit complacent because while there’s been no covid around, they haven’t seen why they should bother to get vaccinated,” SBS News.

“This is why they should get vaccinated.

People cross the road in an empty section of Chinatown in Sydney on June 27 on the first full day of a two-week lockdown to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant. Picture: Steven Saphore / AFP

“We can never isolate ourselves completely from the rest of the world. We can never contain things. We knew there would be ongoing leaks. It’s just about how we control those leaks.

“There’s certainly an imperative that as many people get vaccinated as they possibly can.”

The highly-transmissible Delta variant which has health authorities on edge in Sydney, has been identified in at least 92 countries, with the variant accounting for 99 per cent of new covid cases in the UK.

“This is the problem with hanging everything on vaccines until you’ve got something near a population immunity threshold … you need a much higher coverage to protect against a variant that’s more transmissible,” Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist and associate professor at the University of Leeds school of medicine told The Guardian.

“It just speaks to the fact that we really, really must keep cases down at the same time as rolling the vaccines out.”

Originally published as Australia covid lockdowns: Experts hope vaccinations rise amid new outbreaks