Sydney’s bleak midwinter as Covid outbreak worsens

The Covid-19 outbreak in our largest city worsened at the weekend. And the rhetoric surrounding it darkened. Sunday morning saw an announcement of 77 new Covid cases over the previous 24 hours and one death — a woman in her 90s from southwest Sydney who caught the virus from a family contact. Of the 77 new cases, 33 were people who had been moving around the community while infectious. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who conceded numbers were not going in the right direction, anticipated that more than 100 new cases could be announced on Monday. It was “highly unlikely’’, she warned, that the lockdown would be lifted on Friday. Of 52 Covid patients in hospital, 15 are in intensive care. The third and final match of the 2021 State of Origin rugby league series has been moved to the Gold Coast in Queensland after the NSW government banned Newcastle from hosting the event.

The economic impact is also increasing, with the Morrison government stepping in to help support businesses crippled by the extended Sydney lockdown. On Sunday, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg held a phone hook-up with Ms Berejiklian and NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet to discuss a joint financial assistance package for businesses. Last week Canberra told state officials to finance their own rescue package by borrowing. But, as Stephen Rice and Greg Brown report, a “significant” package, which will also extend assistance to households and workers who have lost income, will be considered by the federal Expenditure Review Committee on Monday.

From Sunday night, the federal government began airing a graphic advertisement about Covid-19 in Sydney, with the aim of driving home the seriousness of the city’s fast-growing outbreak. The ad shows a young woman in hospital on a ventilator gasping for air. “Covid can affect anyone. Stay home. Get tested. Book your vaccination,” the text reads. It is intended to be scary, chief medical officer Paul Kelly said, because a large number of Sydneysiders appeared not to be taking the outbreak seriously. Such campaigns should not be necessary. But recent events in NSW show it is needed. The state has taken a more moderate, rational approach to restrictions, border rules, retail opening and movement by individuals on compassionate grounds than most jurisdictions. The least the population should do is keep the rules and stay home when advised to do so, for their own sake and that of their loved ones and the community. The behaviour of those who received 167 penalty infringement notices on Friday and 106 notices overnight on Saturday for illegal gatherings was “nothing short of disrespectful’’, as NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys says. The daily shame file includes groups gathered for parties, to play cards and PlayStation. The culprits deserve their $1000 fines.

Vaccination rates are rising, albeit slowly, from a low base. As of Sunday, one in 10 Australians had been fully vaccinated, and one in three adults has had at least one jab. As Greg Sheridan writes, there is no rational alternative to the current NSW lockdown or some version of it: “Without vaccines, all policy towards serious, plague-style infectious diseases is the same — isolation. The very word quarantine comes from the 40 days ships were required to isolate in a harbour before they could enter the port during a medieval plague.’’

While hospitals can treat the virus better than when it first broke out, the striking profile of younger people going to hospital in NSW “seems to bear out the idea that the Delta virus hits the young more than earlier variants did’’, Sheridan writes. Comparisons with Britain and the US, where populations are now heavily vaccinated, are not relevant. The Delta variant continues to cause a massive wave of new infections overseas. But in heavily vaccinated societies the death toll is not rising proportionately. As reported in the World pages, a rapid rise in infections in young people has forced Spain, Portugal and The Netherlands to reintroduce restrictions and bring back night curfews. South Korea reported 1378 new Covid cases on Saturday, a third straight record high.

In Sydney, the Berejiklian government is reportedly considering tougher restrictions. Learning from home for schoolchildren is likely to extend beyond next week, when they had been expected to return to classrooms. For now, the winter of discontent will continue.