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Opinion
Wider testing and faster tracing cannot come soon enough
David Crowe
Chief political correspondentThe national response to the coronavirus is entering a period when every decision rests on how long Australia can afford to wait out the crisis.
The warnings within the Morrison government are clear. "We cannot simply wait for a vaccine to arrive," says one cabinet minister. "The economy cannot cope with the wait for a vaccine."
Illustration: Andrew DysonCredit:
Australia has to climb out of the COVID-19 bunker before the air outside is choked with social and economic ruin. When does the climb begin? How will it be managed? The fractures over school closures are a hint of the differences to come on these essential questions.
The success against the COVID-19 pandemic in recent weeks has lifted confidence, eased anxiety and offered proof that community action works. But that confidence will be tested when there is no consensus – yet, at least – on how to relax the shutdowns that have worked so far.
The immediate debate is on the conditions that must be put in place before any social restrictions can be eased. That means more testing, better tracing and faster responses to new outbreaks.
Only when the new benchmarks are set will it be worth the risk of opening up more public spaces, letting more workers back into their offices and perhaps allowing cafes or restaurants to let customers through their doors for more than a takeaway.
Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:
While state and federal governments are sending different signals over schools, the national cabinet has at least settled on a time frame for a decision on easing restrictions. Scott Morrison said on Thursday this would mean a four-week period to consider the impact of measures taken so far.
Australian nurses and specialists have conducted more than 371,000 tests this year, a rate ahead of New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, the United States and Britain as a proportion of the population. But it is still not enough.
“We need good data and that means we need more testing,” says Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician, a professor at the Australian National University and the executive director of ACT Pathology at Canberra Hospital.
“We have to turn the social controls on and off depending on how much community spread there is.”
That can only be done if we have more tests to identify the spread. Collignon cautions that the tests are not as simple as the “kits” described in the news. The standard nasal swab is straightforward but the analysis requires about 10 different chemicals from suppliers around the world. Australia is in a race with other countries to get these raw materials.
The Morrison government is hoping to get another large supply of tests soon, but it can never count on a shipment until it lands. It has been satisfied with the quality of the tests imported so far – an important issue given the flawed test kits used in parts of Europe. There is work under way on local production, but there are doubts about whether it can be scaled up quickly enough.
Better tracing is the next objective. Some of the failures against the virus have been clear for weeks – the bungling of the Ruby Princess, the complacency in early March – but the successes are also significant. Tracing is one of them.
State governments have massively increased their tracing capabilities, sometimes with help from the Australian Defence Force, and this has slowed the spread of infection. The question is whether it can be done more quickly.
The federal plan for a tracing app is already controversial, but the proposal is logical. Someone who tests positive for COVID-19 currently has to go through their movements to identify those who may have caught the virus. The project, based on TraceTogether in Singapore, would require users to allow an encrypted phone app using Bluetooth to record those who are near them.
Is it worth sacrificing privacy to counter a pandemic and ease an economic shutdown? It is a calculation we have never had to make before.
Mary-Louise McLaws, a professor of epidemiology at the University of NSW, has been heartened by the testing rate so far and believes the tracing app is an idea worth debating.
“As an epidemiologist, I think anything that speeds up contact tracing is incredibly helpful for shutting down the spread of such a highly contagious virus as COVID-19,” she says.
“It would have to be carefully balanced with any loss of personal privacy, and that would need a debate in a well-informed community.”
(McLaws also has some practical advice: get a flu shot. If you care about the health workers handling this crisis, do everything you can to ease the load on the health system. There were 18,000 hospitalisations from the flu last year.)
The latest decisions by national cabinet are positive. Morrison was right to change his mind and plan for Parliament to return in early May rather than waiting until August. If the virus is kept under control, perhaps the economic restrictions can be lifted earlier than thought as well.
Do not assume Australia can keep every restriction in place in the hope of a vaccine this year, because that hope can be easily dashed. Professor Peter Doherty, who won the Nobel prize for medicine for his work on the immune system, says a vaccine could take 12 to 18 months.
So the path of patience, if extended too long, becomes a detour to a depression. The destruction of jobs is already catastrophic. The biggest victims are those without savings to fall back on, without assets to cushion their fall, without secure work even before the virus arrived.
Right now, young Australians cannot visualise what it will be like to look for work during a recession. They are at school, TAFE and university, or perhaps waiting out the crisis on unemployment benefits, but they will emerge from isolation to a changed world. We cannot be sure just how brutal that world will be. The wider testing and faster tracing cannot come soon enough.
David Crowe is chief political correspondent