Christmas week to make or break Sydney’s Covid crisis

After recording 30 new coronavirus cases overnight, bringing the known total of the northern beaches outbreak to 70 on Sunday, NSW authorities are treading a fine line. On one hand, precautions have been strengthened. On the other, the Berejiklian government is doing as much as possible to avoid the kind of debilitating lockdown that could bring about tens of thousands of job losses and trigger serious mental health problems among the community. Sydneysiders in the northern beaches have responded well, with few exceptions — staying home and keeping their distance from each other, which is the best way to avoid harsher measures being made compulsory. There is no room for complacency, as Scott Morrison has reminded the nation. A quick glance at Londoners facing an austere and, in many cases, a lonely Christmas, like no other since World War II, underlines what is at stake.

The concern of other state and territory leaders about the movement of people to and from Sydney, especially the northern beaches, is understandable. But the hectoring and lecturing by West Australian Premier Mark McGowan is distasteful and disgraceful. Fast to slam down a hard border against NSW in its entirety on Friday — when most of the state was and is unaffected by the cluster — Mr McGowan’s state jingoism in pursuit of extra votes in March is bad leadership. His ridiculously narrow approach is not in the economic or social interests of West Australians, NSW or the nation.

Mr McGowan’s unsolicited advice to Gladys Berejiklian is simplistic and puerile — “They seem to be engaging in a form of whack-a-mole, they try and step on a gym here or a restaurant there. Rather than playing whack-a-mole, they need to kill all the moles.” Likewise, WA Health Minister Roger Cook’s telling Ms Berejiklian to “look at the scoreboard … we’re 0/252 (the number of days in WA without community transmission)’’. But it’s not clear how Mr Cook will police his diktat that NSW guests cannot sit at the Christmas lunch table or open presents in WA homes. Bread and water in the backyard for them, presumably.

Such parochial reactions to a potential crisis in our largest state raise serious questions about WA’s attitude towards our federation and national unity. Rather than pandering to Mr McGowan with banner headlines such as “New South Fails’’ on Saturday, the West Australian newspaper should hold him to account. Other states have taken a more reasonable approach, differentiating, at this stage, between Greater Sydney and the rest of NSW.

Northern beaches residents have responded well to the Berejiklian government’s call to stay home as much as possible, wear masks and be tested for COVID, with many people waiting five or six hours in queues to be tested on Sunday. But as UNSW epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre said, the testing capacity needs to be easier and more accessible.

Ms Berejiklian has adopted a more liberal approach to the compulsory, authoritarian regime imposed early in Melbourne’s second wave. Home gatherings in Sydney have been limited to no more than 10 visitors. Singing indoors is not allowed and no more than 20 people can dance at weddings. As is often the case, managing the pandemic involves a trade-off between the conflicting advice of health experts and the concerns of business over jobs and viability of firms. National employer association Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox is alarmed at the interstate travel bans he regards as a knee-jerk reaction. The lack of trust between states and their contact tracing and testing systems is destabilising, as Mr Willox said. State borders closing at the first sign of new outbreaks would undermine investment, jobs and confidence just as economic recovery was taking hold.

At the same time, as experience in Britain and Italy shows, nothing wreaks havoc on people and economic activity as quickly and severely as a runaway COVID outbreak. Professor MacIntyre wants an immediate lockdown across Greater Sydney if the infection rate is not down on Monday. She told Stephen Rice New Year’s Eve is likely to be “ the mother of all super-spreading events … a disaster waiting to happen”. The biggest danger, she said, was that large numbers of people now infectious but asymptomatic would travel across Sydney on Christmas Day and infect others. Many of those people, in turn, would be out partying at the peak of their infectiousness on New Year’s Eve.

Ms Berejiklian says it is a positive sign “we still have not seen evidence of massive seeding outside the northern beaches community’’. But a number of popular venues in Sydney’s inner city and inner west have been added to NSW Health’s warning list as authorities track COVID-19’s spread from the northern beaches cluster to potential infection sites on the north shore, inner east, inner west and south. Sydney-siders from all parts of the city are now being told to get tested and self-isolate. A vast contact-tracing effort is under way. Mystery also still surrounds the source of the cluster, with genomic testing suggesting “Patient Zero” is likely from the US. The next day or two will determine whether Ms Berejiklian’s softly-softly, balanced approach is containing a potentially full-blown disaster.