Experts suggest Sydney lockdown might need to be extended despite pressure on the state government to ease restrictions

Experts say the Greater Sydney lockdown might need to be extended due to threatening hazards despite pressure to ease restrictions.

The life-threatening and economic hazards of relaxing Covid-19 restrictions before zero community spread is reached means NSW may need to extend its lockdown, researchers have suggested.

A team of economists, public health experts and modellers from the Australian National University found the benefits of lockdowns that were long enough to get community transmission to zero outweighed the short-term gains of easing lockdowns too early.

“Our key insight was that lockdowns need to be long enough to crush the virus, and that effective, longer lockdowns benefit both public health and the economy,” lead author Quentin Grafton said in a statement on Monday.

Professor Grafton’s comment is similar to those often repeated by West Australian Premier Mark McGowan who has said the goal should always be to “crush and kill” the virus.

However, Mr McGowan has been heavily criticised by east coast commentators for his stance, including Western Australia’s hard border.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian could face pressure later this week to ease restrictions in NSW. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Professor Grafton said with Greater Sydney approaching the end of its initial two-week lockdown, the NSW government was now under pressure to ease restrictions.

“But decisions must be based on the facts on the ground such as the number of new cases, links to known chains of transmission, and the number of new cases not already in self-isolation,” he said.

Professor Grafton elaborated when pressed further by NCA NewsWire about his stance.

“The point is to go early (with a lockdown) and go hard and go significantly long enough to bring about zero Covid-19 community transmission,” he said.

“The numbers aren’t looking good for Greater Sydney at the moment.

“It is a worry — there’s no question about it.”

Lockdown in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Nicholas Eagar

Professor Grafton said a decision to end the lockdown would have to be based on the number of cases that were infectious in the community.

“If we’ve got uncertainty around that ... then we’ve got a problem in Greater Sydney,” he said.

NSW recorded 35 new locally acquired cases overnight, including five linked to a commercial flight from the Gold Coast.

From the new cases, 24 were in isolation for their entire infectious period, while four were in isolation for part of their infectious period and seven were in the community.

Professor Grafton stopped short of calling for the lockdown to be extended, but said a decision should depend on the data available on Friday.

“We’ve got to make sure that we get on top of this and we don’t get an epidemic,” he said.

The virus would not just stay in Sydney, which meant the whole country could be at risk and it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, he added.

A healthcare worker takes a swab from a patient at a drive-through testing station. Picture: Trevor Collens/AFP

Tom Kompas, from University of Melbourne, said authorities should rethink how Covid-19 outbreaks were managed.

“We’re a long way from a post-Covid world. If we think we can do away with periods of movement restrictions when uncontrolled outbreaks occur, we need to think again,” Professor Kompas said in a statement.

“The key point here is not to think about the economic costs over a period of a couple of weeks, large as they are, but rather to consider the costs over a period of months if community transmission continues.”

Professor Grafton told NCA NewsWire that more financial assistance should be provided to people doing it tough during lockdowns, including businesses.

“We need better financial compensation for businesses,” he said.

He pointed to the United Kingdom as a comparison to Australia because they had almost 130,000 deaths and their gross domestic product declined 10 per cent — the largest drop since the 18th century.

With concerns about the Delta variant and Australia’s low vaccination level, it was even more important to manage the pandemic safely from a public health point of view and economically, Professor Grafton said.

Originally published as Experts suggest Sydney lockdown might need to be extended despite pressure on the state government to ease restrictions