Coronavirus Delta danger dawns: vaccine timeline at risk

The Delta variant could force a rethink over whether restrictions can be relaxed once the adult population is largely ­vaccinated, health authorities warn.

Police cordon off the house where the mother of two infected removalists became the fifth person to die in this outbreak. Picture: Joel Carrett

Health authorities are warning that the dangers of the Covid-19 Delta variant will require a rethink of whether restrictions can be ­permanently relaxed once the adult population is largely ­vaccinated.

That warning – which would require the national vaccine program to extend to children before a return to pre-pandemic settings – came as NSW recorded 98 new Covid-19 cases and Victoria abandoned plans to lift a statewide lockdown on Tuesday.

“The Delta strain transmissibility will make us have to rethink about the level of vaccination,” said NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant. “I think we need to see that our journey of living with Covid is going to be a long one.

“We will have to adjust to whatever the virus delivers us. We will respond,” she said.

Dr Chant’s comments came as South Australia became the latest state to impose restrictions — ­including the closure of non-­essential retail and a ban on indoor gatherings — after the state recorded three community Covid-19 transmissions.

The first South Australian case was an 81-year-old man who contracted Covid-19 overseas but completed hotel quarantine in NSW before returning home to Adelaide. The two other infections – a man and a woman both in their 50s – were close contacts of the first case.

Of the 98 new cases in Sydney, 37 had been in the community for some time while infectious.

The mother of two removalists from the city’s west who travelled to regional NSW while infected with Covid-19 on Monday became the fifth person in the state to die from the most recent outbreak.

Roni Shawka

Ramsin Shawka

Her sons Roni and Ramsin Shawka, 27, had been identified as two of four removalists who visited Orange, in the state’s central west, while infectious and in breach of health orders.

Police and health officials spent Monday investigating the death, ordering devastated relatives to stay in their cars outside the family’s Green Valley home to lessen the risk of the virus spreading.

The family lives in one of three southwestern councils – where new cases are concentrated – now subject to stricter restrictions. than other parts of Sydney.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state would not see the effects of tightened restrictions, including stricter movement limits on the three local government areas and the closure of non-essential retail for another four or five days.

“We know the Delta variant is nothing like we have seen,” Ms ­Berejiklian said. “We know how challenging it is but we wouldn’t have thrown everything at it if we didn’t have a chance of quashing it. If we all work together then we can quash it.”

Those concerns are shared by Victorian officials, who are increasing worried about ‘the speed of transmission and how widely the outbreak may have spread.

Victorian authorities on Monday released data that showed the strain had spread within 36 hours of infection, significantly faster than previously recorded, while one spectator at AAMI Park ­infected another despite arriving from a different entrance and sitting on a separate level.

Of the 13,000 close contacts of Victorian Covid-19 cases, many who attended large sporting fixtures at AAMI Park and the MCG, some 5177 live in the regions including in Mildura, in the state’s far north, which recorded its first infection in more than a year.

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews declined on Monday to outline how long the Victorian lockdown will extend – having originally been scheduled to end on Tuesday night – with government and public health officials meeting on Monday evening to discuss the matter.

Sources familiar with the deliberations said the most likely outcome would be an extension of the restrictions for another five days, to midnight on Sunday.

“We are running alongside this virus but not out in front of it,” Mr Andrews said.

“If you think of it like a fire, we have a containment line, we are making significant progress but it is not out yet … What we know with Delta, an hour is like a day, a day is like a week, because it is moving so fast. We see how fast it is moving in Sydney and here.

“If it is smouldering, then it will run again, it will take off.”

The speed and spread of the ­recent outbreak has alarmed health officials, who as recently as last month only considered cases to be infectious in the 48 hours before they developed symptoms.

One of Victoria’s latest cases revealed on Monday is a person who caught the virus while watching the Euro soccer final in a crowd of more than 400 at the Crafty Squire pub in Melbourne’s CBD between 3am and 8am on the morning of July 12.

 

The man from whom the Crafty Squire case caught the virus, a Trinity Grammar teacher in his 30s, had himself caught it just a day and a half earlier, as he watched the Geelong-Carlton AFL match at the MCG between 4pm and 8pm on July 10. Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton said on Monday: “Last year we would not have seen any circumstances where someone who had been exposed was transmitting to someone else a day and a half later. Less than 48 hours later was simply not seen last year with other variants.

“While we acted as conservatively as possible in declaring The Crafty Squire a high-risk venue, we didn’t necessarily expect there would be transmission there.”

Professor Sutton said the rapid rate of transmission was “absolutely a feature” of the Delta variant. Another example of such rapid transmission occurred after the sports-mad Trinity Grammar teacher had dinner with 12 mates at Cremorne restaurant Ms Frankie on the evening of July 13, before heading to nearby AAMI Park to watch to Wallabies-France rugby union Test — to which three transmissions of the virus have so far been linked. The man infected three staff members and five patrons at Ms Frankie, with one of those staff members going on to infect other patrons during a shift just two days later, on Thursday.

Eleven of Victoria’s 71 ­community-acquired cases as of Monday live in regional Victoria, as do almost a third, or 5177 of the 15,800 primary close contacts linked to them. Exposure sites ­extend from Phillip Island, 140km southeast of Melbourne to Mildura, 540km northwest, with the homes of close contacts scattered even further afield, from Warrnambool in the far southwest, to Wodonga in the northeast, and far east Gippsland.

In NSW, Dr Chant said health officials were seeing more infections from children spreading, which was not a characteristic observed with previous strains.

“It is pleasing to see in some countries overseas that we have vaccines that are licensed for use in children, and I know the regulator, the TGA, is often continually considering the vaccine,” she said.