PM’s pragmatic response as Omicron changes the game
Australians in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT woke on Friday to a new pandemic regime. As Scott Morrison announced after national cabinet met on Thursday, the ground rules have been overhauled to deal with the high-volume, low-severity Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus. Tasmania will adopt the changes from January 1, with the Northern Territory and Western Australia to follow at later dates. Under a new, nationally consistent definition of a close contact, people who share a household with someone confirmed as a Covid case or who have spent at least four hours with a confirmed case in a household-like setting will be required to isolate for a week, with the exception of South Australia, which will keep its isolation time at 10 days. A Covid-19-infected person will be required to isolate for seven days and have a negative rapid antigen test on day six before leaving quarantine. But symptomatic close contacts will be required to undergo a PCR test. An asymptomatic close contact will be required to have an RAT and, if positive, undertake a separate PCR test to confirm the result. Requirements for casual contacts to seek testing or isolate have been scrapped.
National cabinet agreed, reasonably, that other contacts who potentially have been exposed to a Covid case but who are at lower risk of infection must monitor for symptoms and need to have an RAT or PCR test only if symptoms occur. RATs will be provided for close contacts, those who are symptomatic and vulnerable cohorts such as remote Indigenous communities. But it is reasonable RATs will not be handed out freely, in general, but can be bought by individuals privately for about $15.
The new approach should bring an end to excessive queues at PCR testing centres. It also should limit the number of workers furloughed as they wait for results or isolate, which has adversely affected businesses, especially in the eastern states. In a sensible move, Tasmania has announced that like Queensland it will scrap the requirement for arrivals from high-risk Covid areas to have a PCR test within 72 hours of travel.
As the Prime Minister said after the national cabinet meeting, evidence is increasing about the lowered severity of illness from the Omicron variant, despite growing case numbers due to it being highly transmissible. Of 1481 Australians in hospital with the variant, 122 people are in intensive care units and 51 on ventilators. That proportion is extremely low, chief medical officer Paul Kelly noted, compared with what has been seen with Delta and other variants in the pre-vaccination era.
Australia’s vaccination program, one of the most successful in the world, remains on track. Of 3.9 million eligible individuals, 2.3 million have already had their booster shots, with 167,000 people coming forward last Wednesday alone – a figure that was in the ballpark of the Australian record of 187,000 first doses administered on September 1. Plenty of booster supplies are available as the protective effects of vaccines continue to be shown. In Britain, reports highlighted by the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, have revealed that as many as nine in 10 patients in intensive care in London were unvaccinated, including people in their 20s and 30s.
The tragic death of a child who was Covid-positive in South Australia is a devastating reminder of how potentially dangerous the virus can be. Authorities have yet to determine the cause of the child’s death, Premier Steven Marshall said.
Across two years, 5.4 million people have died from among 284.4 million Covid cases, with 1.6 million new cases and 7752 deaths reported in the past day. Australia’s record in managing the virus should never be taken for granted. Confronted with Omicron, which moves so fast, the second emergency national cabinet meeting in two weeks was useful and productive.