Covid NSW: Aussies who could lose freedoms as restrictions lift for unvaccinated
Not everyone is celebrating restrictions lifting. For a particular group of Aussies it’s a challenging and scary time.
Health
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NSW will today say goodbye to masks in almost all settings and lift restrictions for the unvaccinated.
But while many will be celebrating the return to normality, there are thousands of immunocompromised people anxious about the changes.
“Levels of anxiety are fairly high so when a state announces they’re going to remove the need to wear masks and other public health measures are going to go, people who are immunocompromised start to worry,” Leukaemia Foundation chief executive Chris Tanti told news.com.au.
“Simple things like going to supermarket puts you at risk.”
Mr Tanti said anti-vaxxers being out in the community and restrictions lifting, such as the removal of the mask mandate in supermarkets, was a problem.
“I know from colleagues in the UK where there are no restrictions and infection rates are out of control that people living with blood cancer are terrified,” he said.
“Even when people are double vaccinated we know that they remain immunocompromised.
“When you’re immunocompromised you’re acutely aware of the risks of getting a cold, of getting a flu, of getting Covid, so I would imagine there’s heightened sensitivity around this for a lot of people living with blood cancer – certainly [in] the ones we speak to there is.”
Mr Tanti said there is a 34 per cent risk of an adult blood cancer patient who has contracted Covid losing their life, which is a more than one in three chance of death.
At least 35 per cent of blood cancer patients – more than one in three – have experienced clinically significant psychological distress regarding their diagnosis and treatment journey since the pandemic began.
While NSW Health was unable to say how many severely immunocompromised people were living in the state, data shows 4463 were diagnosed with blood cancer in 2017 and that number is expected to rise to 12,043 by 2035.
Today in Australia, 50 people will be told they have blood cancer.
In October, Health Minister Greg Hunt said it was expected up to 500,000 people are severely immunocompromised in Australia and may need a third dose of vaccine over the coming months.
The department of health told news.com.au the number of health exemptions from getting the vaccine is less than 0.117 per cent of the number of Covid vaccinations administered in Australia.
Dealing with the increased risk
Natalie Britt, who lives in Sydney, has chronic myeloid leukaemia, for which there is no cure, and currently takes medication every day to keep her symptoms at bay.
She has been comfortably going into her office job five days a week but said now she will have to reconsider. Her specialist does not want her around unvaccinated people.
“I have to take that advice and go ‘do I really need to be the office five days a week or can I limit that capacity and look after myself in this period and see how things go?’ I think it’s a watch and wait,” she said.
“Do I think there will be a spike in cases because people are allowed to be more free and unvaccinated? Yes, I think there will be a spike and that does scare me a bit.”
But the 32-year-old said she won’t stop going to the supermarket, and she can’t predict who there is vaccinated, so she will have to do everything in her power to manage her own safety – such as getting her hands on the booster vaccine, social distancing and being vigilant with healthy hygiene.
Making tough calls
Immunocompromised people in Victoria are also anxiously awaiting the change of rules.
The Victorian Government announced today that the jab mandate would be removed for all customers in retail (except hair and beauty services), real estate, places of worship, weddings and funerals.
While the mask mandate was expected to be dropped for retail settings this week, it has been confirmed it will continue.
Melbourne mum Samantha has a nine-year-old son, Noah, who was diagnosed with a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November 2019 just before the pandemic.
Noah is now in remission, but has endured 19 long months of gruelling weekly chemotherapy.
Samantha said she felt conflicted about sending her kids back into the community and said making the call was extremely stressful.
“I’ve spoken to so many mums at the cancer centre and we’re all just like ‘we don’t know what to do’,” she said.
“Do we keep them home and ride it out and see how it goes? There’s no right answer.
“For anyone going through treatment, they’ll never be normality with Covid around.
“The best way I can describe it is going through a minefield. That’s what it feels like. You don’t know where you’re going to step.”
Samantha made the decision to send Noah back to school and it had positive impacts on his behaviour – a result of cancer treatment – that was concerning his parents.
But some parents of cancer patients, who Samantha labelled “superhuman”, had decided to stick with homeschooling.
Samantha, who has also lost family to Covid, said she wouldn’t be taking her kids to the shops and they were sticking to open spaces and eating food outside at places like the beach.
“We’re just having to adapt to a higher risk environment and that sucks, but it’s just the way it is,” she said.
Her message to anti-vaxxers is “you need to walk through a children’s cancer centre”.
“When you hear kids crying and begging not to have procedures done to them ... you would swallow lead if it meant you could protect even one of them,” she said.
“When Noah was diagnosed I was brought into a room and was given a stack of papers that said ‘This is the poison we’re going to put into his body. This is what we know it definitely causes: infertility, renal failure, blindness, heart issues. Please sign and we’ll save his life.’
“If I can trust people I just met to do that, I have to trust the vaccine will do its thing as well.”
The Victorian health department said restrictions for unvaccinated Victorians remain under review.
Originally published as Covid NSW: Aussies who could lose freedoms as restrictions lift for unvaccinated
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