Open up, even if coronavirus cases are high: Doherty Institute modelling

Reopening with thousands of active Covid-19 cases will not lead to more deaths over six months than waiting for low virus numbers, the Doherty Institute has found.

Scott Morrison is seeking to hold the premiers to the national cabinet agreement for restrictions to be eased at vaccination rates of 70 to 80 per cent. Picture: Gary Ramage

Reopening Australia with thousands of Covid-19 cases active in the community will not lead to more deaths over six months than waiting for virus numbers to be contained at low numbers, updated modelling by the Doherty Institute has found.

The Australian can reveal the modelling, to be discussed at a meeting of national cabinet on Friday, conducted analysis of three scenarios over a 180-day period based on Covid case numbers in the tens, hundreds and thousands when restrictions were lifted and found no material difference in ­expected fatality rates.

The updated modelling, provided to state and territory leaders on Wednesday, comes as Scott Morrison seeks to hold the premiers to the national cabinet agreement for restrictions to be eased at vaccination rates of 70 to 80 per cent.

The Doherty Institute said this week the original advice on its modelling still held, irrespective of case numbers.

The new analysis will quell concerns from state leaders about the outbreak in NSW by suggesting the spiralling number of infections does not present a major obstacle to proceeding with the national cabinet’s four-step reopening strategy.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Thursday became the first state leader to commit to returning individual freedoms to fully vaccinated residents amid an outbreak, as the state recorded 1029 cases.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is the first state leader to commit to returning individual freedoms to fully vaccinated residents. Picture: Getty Images

From September 13, restrictions in NSW will be eased for ­fully vaccinated people living outside local government areas of concern, allowing them to participate in outdoor gatherings with up to five people, including children, provided it is within their LGA or 5km from their home.

Residents within LGAs of concern will be able to gather outdoors for recreation, but it will be limited to one hour.

Further restrictions will be eased in October when 70 per cent of the state is fully inoculated.

National cabinet leaders are due to discuss the vaccine rollout among high school students, with the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation finalising its advice on jabs for children aged 12 to 15.

Responding to calls for children to be included in the national vaccine targets, the Prime Minister said this was not in the advice from the Doherty Institute which had based the transition between the four-steps of the national plan on increasing numbers of people aged 16 and over getting the jab.

“That does not by implication say there is no need to vaccinate children 12 to 15,” Mr Morrison said. “And, that will be a very clear decision of my government that we will need to go ahead and vaccinate children 12 to 15.

“These two objectives are not working against each other, I see them working completely together with each other.”

A preliminary list of exemptions for vaccinated Australians – prepared by Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory – is also on Friday’s national cabinet agenda. Momentum is building to allow returning Australians to isolate at home ahead of Christmas, with national cabinet preparing an overhaul of quarantine rules.

 

With the hotel quarantine system under stress, the national cabinet will use South Australia’s “at-home” pilot to support a new approach to Covid-19 quarantine arrangements when the country moves out of the suppression phase.

Under national cabinet’s reopening plan, international travel to green zone countries with high vaccine rates or limited Covid-19 cases would resume once the vaccination rate reached 80 per cent double dose coverage. Those countries could include Singapore, the US, Britain, Japan, South Korea and Pacific Island nations.

After Qantas declared it was planning to resume international travel in December, in line with projections that Australia would have reached 80 per cent vaccine coverage, Tourism Minister Dan Tehan said he hoped ­returning Australians could “quarantine at home in the lead-up to Christmas”.

In addition to the South Australia pilot program, former Health Department secretary Jane Halton is leading a second national review of hotel quarantine arrangements alongside Graeme Head, infectious disease expert Peter Collignon and professor Andrew Wilson.

Ms Halton’s first review last year warned that the hotel quarantine system was vulnerable to breaches that were “hard to eliminate”. “It is also an expensive resource and comes at a high cost to individual, social and economic wellbeing,” Ms Halton wrote.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee considered two options to quarantine international travellers in June last year, which included reducing the time of quarantine and combining it with home quarantine. The AHPPC opted for the 14-day, hotel-quarantine model because “the risk of Covid-19 in travellers returning from many countries is increasing”.

A senior source close to the process said it was unlikely Australians would “put up with hotel quarantine beyond this year”.

“They want to get life back to normal and they want to travel,” the source said.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, who spoke with Mr Morrison this week, said the resumption of international flights would be influenced by whether travellers could quarantine at home.

New Zealand, which is facing a Covid-19 outbreak of the Delta strain, this month announced it would adopt a UK-style traffic light system with a tiered ­approach to quarantine measures for returning citizens and travellers. Travellers from countries on its green list must take Covid-19 tests but are not required to quarantine. Unvaccinated travellers from amber countries can quarantine at home for 10 days.

Mr Morrison welcomed the launch of South Australia’s home quarantine program and said record surges in the vaccine rollout, off the back of 335,420 vaccines delivered on Wednesday, gave businesses the confidence to know “they can come through”.

“That their financiers and their investors can have that same confidence, that people will be able to get those hours back and go back to work. That people can get on the bus again and on the tram again and go to work,” Mr Morrison said. “That performers can get on the stage at live venues again. That people can gather in restaurants, and they can do it not just for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, but know that can be their life again going forward, and we can have the certainty.”

Mr Tehan said the federal government expected to see the resumption of interstate travel once the 70 per cent target was achieved, warning any delays would further damage the tourism industry.

“The national plan is our way out of the pandemic, and it’s incredibly important for the tourism industry that we stick to the national plan — 660,000 jobs depend on it,” Mr Tehan said.

Health Department analysis presented to the Prime Minister on Thursday showed that vaccinations had resulted in a much smaller number of deaths from Covid-19 infections in the NSW outbreak this year, about one in 160 cases, than in last year’s Victorian outbreak, when about one in 23 people with Covid-19 died.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: YONI BASHAN