State of disaster resorts to desperate Covid measures

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is right: this cannot go on for another six months. The state’s new restrictions to curtail coronavirus — especially the 8pm-5am curfew that began Sunday night after a few hours’ notice — are reminiscent of living under martial law in authoritarian regimes. Through world wars and the 1930s Depression, no Australian city has seen anything like it. The measures, to apply for six weeks, and new restrictions on workplaces and industries being announced on Monday, will cost workers, their families, businesses and the national economy billions of dollars and intense stress. Taxpayers will suffer the fallout for years, if not decades.

That said, the central objective of Victoria’s state of disaster declared on Sunday is worthwhile — provided it works. Rather than limping along until Christmas or the new year with hundreds of new COVID-19 cases every day and ongoing lockdowns, the aim is to radically contain the virus in a limited time, reducing transmission to as close to zero cases a day as possible. In an interconnected world powered by trade, containment and not elimination, must remain the goal.

Victoria’s caseload increased by 671 on Sunday, with seven more deaths, bringing the national toll to 208. The latest victims were in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Case numbers have risen in triple digits since early July and spiralled during Melbourne’s stage three restrictions. On Sunday, Victoria’s seven-day average daily increase rose to a record 518. But the rest of the nation is in a strong position, with NSW fighting hard, through effective tracing, to hold the line. But COVID is inclined to “get away’’, as Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday. Across the world, another million cases have been diagnosed in the past four days.

While asking a lot of Victorians, Mr Andrews’s government also needs to ask a lot more of itself. It has gone for broke in imposing six weeks of unprecedented restrictions. If its gamble is to succeed, it needs to use that hiatus to remedy some of the shortcomings that have brought the state to this point. The restrictions will demand heavy sacrifices from all age groups, with more to come on Monday. But Mr Andrews has said little about how his government plans to improve its performance in dealing with the virus. There can be no room in the coming six weeks for the kinds of mistakes to date. These include poor messaging to non-English-speaking groups and the shambles over lapses by private protection firms engaged to oversee hotel quarantining. The priorities, however, must be remedying delays in providing COVID-19 test results and delays and gaps in contact tracing. Of 6322 active cases in Victoria, 760 are what Mr Andrews described as “mystery cases’’, yet to be traced to an original source. The number shows the work facing health authorities.

The 8pm curfew, limiting essential shopping and exercise to within 5km of Melburnians’ homes, confining students to home learning and other restrictions are designed to “limit the amount of movement, therefore limiting the amount of transmission’’ of the virus, Mr Andrews says. Anything less would see the pandemic drag on “for months and months and months’’. The stage four measures will be backed by $1652 fines for those violating them, or thousands more if cases are taken to court. Doorknocks to check if patients who have the virus are at home will be stepped up. This is sensible. As Scott Morrison says, the measures are needed, regrettably, to save lives.

But Melburnians in good health who are unable to visit a friend for coffee or leave their homes after 8pm, even while adhering to hygiene rules and maintaining a safe distance, are entitled to ask if doing so would be more dangerous to public health than patients waiting days for test results or, in some cases, up to a fortnight before contact tracing begins. For good reason, doctors have complained about health bureaucrats’ discouraging them from testing the family members or work colleagues of people with COVID-19 unless they showed symptoms or had a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services confirming them as a close contact of an infected person. Such letters can take time, with delays creating manifold opportunities for contagion. Ugly as its numbers were, the Morrison government’s July 23 economic statement, a harbinger of chronic budget weakness for years, was not predicated on a six-week stage four lockdown of the economy of the nation’s second-largest city. The cost of the pandemic to taxpayers will now, obviously, be far higher, with Victorians to be given expanded access to welfare benefits. The ultimate cost of the new lockdown will also depend, in part, on effectiveness. The speed and trajectory of the national economic recovery, will be “dependent on our progress on the health front”, as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Sunday. At one of the darkest moments in our peacetime history, it is reasonable to weigh up the merits of responses to the crisis and whether restrictions are proportionate and likely to work. The consequences of failure would be catastrophic, in terms of health and for our economic future and quality of life. The Prime Minister told Victorians: “Australians all around the country are backing you in, because we all know for Australia to succeed, we need for Victoria to get through this.” Desperate times demand desperate measures. The next six weeks will show how well the Andrews government can make this desperate strategy work.