Coronavirus: Covid-19 spike must not hurt national bounce back

Panic buying appears to be underway again at Keilor Central Shopping Centre amid fears of a second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria. Picture: Paul Jeffers

The feeling of deja vu watching Melbourne shoppers hoard toilet paper is disheartening. It raises the spectre of going backwards or a return to lockdown, compounding grave damage already inflicted on the unemployed, struggling businesses, consumption and government revenue. The mini-spike in coronavirus cases in Victoria is a wake-up call for the public to persevere with precautions and to authorities. A responsible approach is vital — no more street marches, whatever the cause, should be tolerated for now. The June 6 spectacle sent the wrong signal to citizens who were already fed up with restrictions and isolation. Complacency returned. That said, the best favour the Andrews government and other states can do the nation is to press ahead prudently with opening up economic activity and interstate travel.

Talk of a “second wave” of COVID-19 in Victoria is off beam. Australia had more of a ripple than a first wave. Our last reported death from the virus was on May 23; l02 people have died out of 7486 cases. We need to be realistic. For as long as the virus remains prevalent across the world — more than 183,000 new cases were recorded in 24 hours on Sunday, mainly in the Americas and South Asia — outbreaks will occur on our shore. Good preparation by governments and the health system has ensured Australia has the testing, tracking, equipment and staff to cope. Testing must be quick and efficient. Learning from Victoria, those supposed to be in quarantine who break bounds must be fined.

Localised rings of containment, as Scott Morrison says, have always been part of the plan: it is vital to “run our economy, run our lives (and) run our communities alongside this virus … We can’t just shut up everything forever”. If health authorities deem lockdowns unavoidable after a week of double-digit increases in Victoria’s caseload, measures should be short, sharp and tightly centred. The only justification could be preventing the virus spreading. Victoria accounts for a quarter of the national economy. And however sobering it is to realise the state’s average daily rate of new cases per million people has almost caught up to that of Italy, as Rachel Baxendale reports, it should be remembered that Italy’s crisis is abating.

Australia’s senior federal health officers insist there is no medical reason to continue border shutdowns between states. Yet among overreactions to events in Victoria, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan stretched populism to absurdity, announcing the WA border, more than 2000km away, had been set to open on August 8 but “that had to change because of what’s going on in Victoria”. August 8 was ridiculously late; delaying it further is ludicrous. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is also in fantasy land, claiming her border closure has helped the state because it allowed her government to relax restrictions. Apart, that is, from $770m in tourist revenue being lost per month in Queensland and 5000 jobs lost across the nation. Interstate visitors make up 47.4 per cent of its domestic tourism market. As Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen told The Australian recently, when the mercury drops in the south “the phones in Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef usually ring off the hook”. The current silence is devastating for jobs and households, especially when the industry has paid to be COVID ready.

Nor is it feasible, as some have suggested, to stop only Victorians from travelling. Tourism Research Australia data shows Victorians spent more on tourism in NSW, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory last year than local residents. More fundamentally, our continent’s tyranny of distance makes interstate travel an intrinsic part of our working and personal lives. Australia’s flattened economy is too precarious for petty border skirmishes such as Daniel Andrews’s crack: “Why would you wanna go to South Australia anyway?”

But he is correct to point out that Victoria, like the rest of the nation, is pursuing the suppression and not the eradication of COVID-19 — a strategy endorsed by national cabinet. People in different states will probably have to live with the reality and threat of COVID-19 for months or years. That is why the way this spike is handled matters. It will set the standard for managing further outbreaks.