Victorian flu season ‘done and dusted’, Covid infections peak

Victoria’s chief health officer says the winter surge Covid-19 cases has peaked around the country.

Victorian chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Victoria’s chief health officer says the winter Covid-19 surge has peaked in the state, but he is likely to urge people to wear masks indoors for years unless a vaccine is developed that protects against all variants.

Brett Sutton said health authorities around the country are also reporting infections have plateaued, with Victoria’s seven-day average falling from 11,730 infections last week to 10,199 – earlier than he expected.

“Essentially almost all of them (chief health officers) … are confident they’re at a plateau if not on the downside,” Professor Sutton said. “Some of them very clearly have had reduced numbers of 10, 20 per cent compared to where they were at one or two weeks ago,” he said.

“I think most of my chief health officer colleagues, even if they’re not calling it a peak, are reasonably confident they are very much in a plateau, if not on the downside.”

He also said the flu season appeared to be “done and dusted”.

Asked if he was likely to recommend the use of masks into the future, Professor Sutton said he would urge people to wear them for “years”.

“We are facing a new variant and another wave every three, four or five months. I think that will be the picture across the world for some time to come,” he said. “It will only be if we get an intra­nasal vaccine or pan coronavirus vaccine that works for all variants, and it stops us getting infected in the first place and does not wane in its effectiveness very much that we (could) see an end to this pandemic.”

Burnet Institute modelling released by the state health department predicted if children wore masks in schools and adults wore them indoors, there would be a drop in infections by between 10 and 20 per cent. There would also be a reduction in hospital admissions by between 15 and 23 per cent and deaths by between 5 and 14 per cent.

Health department data showed the BA 4 and BA 5 variants of Omicron has landed a greater proportion of older ­people in hospital, with 26.7 per cent of people aged between 75 and 84 hospitalised.

It compared with 19.5 per cent during the BA 1 wave during the Christmas and New Year period, and 11.4 per cent during last year’s Delta wave.

Professor Sutton said it had meant the latest variant was more lethal for the elderly.

The Burnet Institute estimated less than half of all infections were being diagnosed or reported.

Professor Sutton said about 45 per cent of positive cases are reporting their results, and about 8 per cent of all new Covid cases were reinfections.