The reason why the Northern Rivers is not considered a Covid hotspot yet

Being declared a hotspot allows that area to receive extra PPE from the National Medical Stockpile and asymptomatic testing at respiratory clinics.

Covid-19 testing in Lismore.

While most Northern Rivers residents have started life under the first lockdown for 2021, with homeschooling and confusion over who is an essential worker, the area has not been yet labelled a Covid hotspot by the government.

According to the Department of Health, Australian Chief Medical Officer, professor Paul Kelly, has not listed the Northern Rivers as a Covid-19 hotspot yet.

According to the Department of Health website, such declaration, for the purpose of Commonwealth support enables:

• Provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from the National Medical Stockpile.
• Actions for aged care facilities including PPE, single site workforce supplement and integration of an aged care response centre into the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre.
• Assistance with contact tracing if requested.
• Asymptomatic testing via General Practice Respiratory Clinics
• Re-prioritisation of vaccine supplies, if required
• Access to Covid Disaster Payment, if eligibility criteria is met
• Two Medicare Benefits Schedule items for telehealth consultations for patients in COVID-19 hotspots.

The website also explains that determining a hotspot requires “consideration of the epidemiological aspects of locally acquired cases” and the identification of the appropriate geographical area, “to enable the targeting of public health actions to control transmission and mitigate further spread, at the local, jurisdictional and national levels.”

Triggers that would allow the authorities to consideration the Northern Rivers as a hotspot include:

• Any area where there is the occurrence of a case of infection in the community with a more transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 and opportunities for wide community exposure.
• In a metropolitan area where the average over three days is 10 locally acquired cases per day, or more than 30 cases in three consecutive days.
• A rural or regional area where the average over three days is three locally acquired cases per day, or nine cases over three consecutive days.

As soon as a trigger was activated, the Commonwealth will apply further analyses to assist in the defining of a ‘hotspot’.

Hotspots can later on be delisted once case counts have a ‘sustained trend of decrease over at least 14 days”.