Proportionate response to Covid-19 avoids lockdown

Compared with some of her panic-prone interstate counterparts to the north, south and west, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is leading her state through Sydney’s Covid-19 outbreak without histrionics. There was no lockdown, snap or otherwise, declared on Thursday after 11 new cases of the virus were recorded overnight, 10 of them linked. Other states have been locked down with fewer than half that number. Neither was Ms Berejiklian taking the pandemic lightly. Her concern, amid 49 cases, was “medium to high”. Saying “since the pandemic has started, this is perhaps the scariest period that NSW is going through” was as dramatic as she became on Thursday. Neither she nor chief health officer Kerry Chant ruled out a lockdown if cases continued to rise.

Ms Berejiklian and her government are treating Sydneysiders as adults and the public has responded in a mature manner, reducing risks, staying home, getting tested and wearing masks. There were more dramatics across the Tweed border when Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles, on the eve of school holidays in the nation’s three largest states, upped the ante. Concrete blocks – the Great Wall of Coolangatta – might be reinstalled along Queensland’s southern border if cases continued to surge in NSW, he said.

Avoiding a lockdown in Sydney is in the public interest, as are the sensible, proportionate restrictions imposed to date. The government’s approach encourages people, as Scott Morrison said, “knowing that as soon as those restrictions are not necessary they will be lifted”. That said, there is no excuse for the outbreak. It was entirely avoidable and contains a basic lesson that must be learned by the Berejiklian government and taken on board across all jurisdictions. As Ellie Dudley reports, the NSW government was warned four months ago about the “gaping hole in Australia’s biosecurity system” that allowed unvaccinated and unmasked drivers transporting international aircrew to hotel quarantine. In an incompetent response that beggars belief, the government rejected the advice. That mistake was inexcusable then and is more so now that the vaccine rollout is on the cusp of covering seven million Australians with their first doses. After police complete their investigation of the case that triggered the Sydney outbreak, authorities must ensure the rules are made watertight. This is the second time a privately employed driver transporting airline workers has tested positive for Covid-19. A Sydney ground transport employee caught it in December last year.

The Sydney outbreak is also further proof, if any is needed, about why pushing ahead as fast as possible with the vaccine rollout is crucial to safeguarding the public, keeping the economy ticking, living with the virus and opening international borders as soon as possible. Scientists in Australia and overseas advise that patients need two doses of Covid-19 vaccines to protect themselves effectively against the Delta variant of coronavirus. Despite the experience of the past 16 months, Covid remains something of an enigma. For all the fear it invokes, not one Australian is currently in intensive care after contracting it. The Delta variant, described by health authorities and politicians as “highly contagious”, can certainly be that – transmitted through “fleeting moments of crossover”, as health editor Natasha Robinson writes. What is encouraging, however, is the ability of NSW contact tracers to keep up with its spread and the protection – though not immunity – provided by masks and vaccines.