Flexibility, common sense needed to live with Covid

While Omicron is less dangerous than earlier Covid-19 variants, its rampant transmissibility is proving challenging for governments and industry, with three steps forward in the return to normal life often being offset by one step back. What matters is that borders, communities and workplaces are open and Australians are moving around, going about their lives, including travelling. But on Friday, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who has pushed forward strongly to open up NSW, suspended non-urgent elective surgery for a month amid soaring Covid infections putting pressure on hospitals. Mr Perrottet also announced that no singing or dancing would be allowed in hospitality venues and that workers in industries requiring mandatory vaccination would be required to have booster shots. In Queensland, where the school year was due to start on January 24, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced it could be delayed for a fortnight, allowing more time for primary school children, in particular, to be vaccinated. She urged Queenslanders to work from home where possible and to consider staying indoors for the next six weeks. “That’s not a big ask,” she said.

Queensland’s caseload on Friday demonstrates the high spread, low severity of Omicron. New cases reached a record number of 10,953, which brought the state’s active caseload to 52,619. Of these, 313 people are in hospital, with just 14 patients in intensive care. As in all states, the numbers that matter are those in hospital, especially in ICU and on ventilators. The rate at which Omicron is surging, while adding to pressure on exhausted hospital staff, may prove a blessing in disguise, health editor Natasha Robinson reports. Infectious disease experts believe the Omicron variant may have accelerated progress towards the end of the pandemic, especially in countries that are seeing very high rates of infection.

University of Sydney infectious diseases expert Robert Booy says that in the past, pandemics have lasted two or three years, then tended to quieten down. “Experience teaches us we might be in a good position, especially because we’ve got the double advantage of vaccination immunity and wild virus-induced immunity, both at high levels,” he said. Two factors were needed for a virus to burn itself out from epidemic to endemic. First, it had to infect a sufficient number of people for it to no longer find susceptible hosts. Second, high vaccination levels made many people immune, leaving the virus no more people left to infect. With one in 10 Londoners infected, British experts are calling the approaching end of the pandemic there. But other doctors are sceptical. Given the unpredictable nature of Covid-19, much depends on whether another variant emerges and, if so, how serious and transmissible it would be.

Flexibility and good judgment will be the key to living with Covid. Essential services industries are calling for sweeping changes to isolation requirements for workers as soaring Covid absenteeism has emerged as a significant problem in food and grocery supply chains.

Health authorities and governments must decide whether household contacts of Covid patients should be able to work during their seven-day isolation period if they are asymptomatic and have tested negative by rapid antigen or PCR tests. The same question is also vital in workplaces with severe staff shortages. Chief medical officer Paul Kelly says workers considered to be a low transmission risk would be allowed to continue working in aged-care facilities in an effort to ease staff shortages. As with other contagious illnesses, those with symptoms or at a stage where they could spread the virus should stay away. As the working year picks up pace, national cabinet, state health authorities and employers will face difficult judgment calls. What is clear, however, is that nothing would be gained from lockdowns or closed borders.