Testing time as we await the jab

The detection in Western Australia of another case of the new, more infectious coronavirus variant that has wreaked havoc in the UK underlines the need for all states and territories to enact effective precautions to prevent it escaping into the community from international quarantine hotels. These precautions must cover airline, airport, transport, hotel and medical staff. WA Premier Mark McGowan said the traveller had returned from Poland via Doha. Three people in quarantine in the west have been diagnosed with the UK variant, which has been found to be 50 to 70 per cent more contagious than the main strain. Four cases of the super strain also have been detected in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program, where health authorities reportedly are considering closing up to UK arrivals. Barring Australians from home would be a harsh barrier too far. But, as Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, the UK strain is a great concern. Health ministers, who are meeting this week, and medical officers, who meet every day, need to devise a strategy, and governments and stakeholders must implement it as soon as possible.

Britain, Jacquelin Magnay reported on Tuesday, has been “plunged into its darkest mood since the depths of World War II” following Boris Johnson’s announcement of its third severe lockdown, to last for at least seven weeks. Despite weeks of strict tier four lockdown, 58,784 new COVID-19 cases, a 42 per cent spike in a week, and another 407 deaths were recorded in Britain on Monday. The medical system is close to being overwhelmed, prompting the Johnson government to move to tier five restrictions, closing all schools, universities, cancelling exams, limiting sales of takeaway alcohol and returning citizens to virtual house arrest. As Magnay writes, people have been “worn down by the first 100-day lockdown in March, April, May and June, where everything bar a local supermarket and chemist was closed, and then since October a series of tiers and lockups … everyone is resigned to the most dire of winters and even spring”. Businesses and jobs are collapsing.

Recovery will hinge on a successful mass inoculation program. Its 1.39 per cent coverage is comparable to 1.38 per cent in the US. Those figures are dwarfed, however, by Israel vaccinating more than 14 per cent of its 10 million people. Israel has made vaccination a priority. As a nation that faces daily threats to its existence, it has shown its remarkable capacity to respond during an emergency.

With Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration expected to approve the Pfizer vaccine this month, debate is turning to whether the Morrison government’s plan to roll it out from March is soon enough. The situation around the world is grim, but the move by Qantas to sell overseas flights from July is a welcome sign of hope. We also await World Health Organisation investigators’ findings about the origin of COVID in Wuhan with intense interest. The claim by US Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger that the most “credible” theory around the origin of the virus is that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is too serious to be ignored.