Coronavirus: NSW in ‘five-week race to freedom’

NSW is on a trajectory to reach the key threshold of 70 per cent vaccination cover in as little as five weeks, federal health officials say.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian says while the NSW government wants to ease restrictions ‘as much as possible’, it will be possible only with higher vaccination rates. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Federal health officials believe NSW is on a trajectory to hit 70 per cent vaccination cover in as little as five weeks, with Gladys Berejiklian tying the relaxation of Sydney’s lockdown to hitting significant inoculation targets.

“Once you get to 50 per cent vaccination, 60 per cent, 70 per cent, that triggers more freedoms. We can turn this around in four weeks,” the NSW Premier said after the state reported a record 239 Covid-19 cases on Sunday.

With more than 82,000 doses distributed in 24 hours, commonwealth officials are more optimistic that weekly vaccinations in NSW could rise to 650,000, paving the way for the 70 per cent cover level to be hit in September.

At the current trajectory of about 450,000 doses weekly, however, NSW would reach the 80 per cent cover ­figure used by Ms Berejiklian as the threshold for a return to pre-pandemic ­settings only in mid-November.

The push to accelerate inoculations in Sydney – and in particular the city’s southwestern and western suburbs hard hit by the current outbreak – comes as the scientist in charge of the nation’s Covid-19 road map said she was optimistic Australians would embrace the vaccine program.

“I am still optimistic that once we have really good supply, we won’t be facing the challenges we have and that we are seeing in some countries overseas,” said Sharon Lewin, the director of Melbourne’s Doherty Institute.

It was Professor Lewin’s team that provided national cabinet with modelling that underpins plans for post-pandemic normalisation, with a vaccine coverage target of 70 per cent before the country can move out of the ­current virus suppression phase.

When coverage reaches 80 per cent, restrictions on vaccinated Australians will largely be lifted and international travel will begin to return to previous levels.

“I am optimistic that we will not see the same hesitancy that we’re seeing in countries like the US here in Australia,” Professor Lewin told The Australian.

While a number of US states have fully vaccinated more than 70 per cent of their populations, others have struggled with ­hesitancy and a low take-up rate.

 

Ms Berejiklian said while the NSW government wanted to ease restrictions “as much as possible”, it would be possible only with higher vaccination rates.

“There is no place in the world that has been able to live with the Delta virus and not have higher rates of vaccination. We have to be very clear about that,” she said.

The existing lockdown across Sydney is due to expire on August 28, although this is likely to be extended with some changes in areas that continue to record higher rates of transmission.

Prior to the most recent extension, Treasury officials produced economic modelling about the impact of a lockdown that would extend until September 17.

Federal officials believe the 70 per cent target is achievable ­because vaccination hesitancy has waned since updated Australian Technical Advisory Group on ­Immunisation advice on the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

So far, Ms Berejiklian has avoided discussing carrot-and-stick approaches to vaccine ­hesitancy but she has hinted that the lockdown would be eased if high rates of immunisation were achieved in the coming weeks.

Of the 239 cases recorded on Sunday, 61 were known to be ­infectious in the community at some point and the isolation ­status of a further 98 people is under investigation.

Officials said 124 cases had not been linked to known sources, with investigation continuing.

Sending a strong signal that ­restrictions could be eased ­within weeks, Ms Berejiklian said high rates of vaccination during August would provide immediate pathways out of lockdown and potentially end their use.

“We have the month of August to get the vaccination rates as high as possible. Let August be the month where we break records with the vaccination,” she said.

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns on Sunday backed the ­government’s vaccination drive but criticised a decision to divert Pfizer doses from the Hunter and Central Coast regions to inoculate students in Sydney’s western and southwestern suburbs.

NSW Health decided on ­Friday to reallocate Pfizer vac­cines from non-metropolitan ­regions to maximise vaccinations in communities under strain, resulting in booking cancellations, including for frontline workers.

“This is in no way a desirable action by the Ministry of Health but access to supplies for NSW have become so constrained that they have been left with no alternative,” an internal email ­obtained by The Australian read.

Mr Minns said he would seek a “commonsense solution” to the problem through consultation with the government. “After all, we all need to remember these communities are in lockdown just as most of Sydney is in lockdown. It’s not a similar situation to ­regional NSW,” he said.

Ms Berejiklian said a rise in vaccinations would prevent the state from re-entering a lockdown after it emerged from the current restrictions.

“Other states might be facing regular lockdowns in and out all the time,” she said. “We want this to be the last lockdown we have and we can make that happen if we get vaccinated.

“Our strategy for NSW is to get vaccination rates to 60, 70, 80 per cent. That means we can live with the Delta variant and we won’t have to go in and out of ­lockdown.”

Michael Kidd, the acting ­commonwealth chief medical ­officer, said 4.5 million Covid-19 vaccines had been administered in July, compared with 3.2 million in June and 2.1 million in May.

Professor Kidd said only 15 of more than 2700 local cases linked with the current Sydney outbreak had been fully vaccinated.

“There have been no notified cases of people who are fully vaccinated who have required admission to hospital apart from the small number of residents of residential aged-care facilities moved out of their facility and into hospital as a precaution to optimise their care and to prevent the risk of further spread to other residents,” he said. “No fully vaccinated people have been admitted to intensive care units.”

Highlighting the difficulty in hitting a high vaccination target is the experience of other countries, including the US, which is expected to hit 70 per cent coverage only in early November.

Figures compiled by US organisation Our World in Data shows Britain and Singapore both have a vaccination coverage rates of about 57 per cent.

The most recent federal Health ­Department data, for July 31, showed 19 per cent of Australia’s adult population was now fully vaccinated.

A further 41 per cent had received one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine.

The take-up of AstraZeneca vaccines to people aged between 16 and 39 in NSW has risen dramatically in July, the Australian Immunisation Register shows.

Asked whether Australia would reach a 70 per cent coverage level by the end of the year, Professor Kidd would only say: “I’ll let you do the maths.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: JAMIE WALKER