Experts braced for peak in ‘short, sharp’ Omicron outbreak

The trajectory of Covid-19 cases being recorded around the world has boosted confidence that infections in Australia will follow a path of massive increase followed by a sudden slump.

A man gets swabbed at a Covid-19 testing centre in New York’s Times Square on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The trajectory of Covid-19 cases being recorded around the world has boosted confidence among medical experts that infections in Australia will follow a path of massive increase followed by a sudden slump.

The latest case numbers from South Africa – where the Omicron variant first emerged – has sparked hope the fourth wave could soon be over, after the country reported just 8078 daily cases down from its peak of 37,875 on December 12.

As the US marks another world record, surpassing one million cases in a single day on Monday, top health adviser Anthony Fauci said that while cases were climbing at an “almost a vertical increase”, South Africa offered some hope that cases would soon peak.

Epidemiologists are predicting that Australia is on the same path after it recorded another day of record high case numbers with more than 64,000 cases nationally.

University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely said that examples overseas, as well as the climbing case numbers in Australia, suggested the virus would soon run out of people to infect and become a “short, sharp epidemic”.

“If you just look at NSW, which had about 35,000 cases today, that would be a gross underestimate for many reasons,” he said.

“Omicron is far more asymptomatic than Delta; it’s been estimated 90 per cent of Omicron infections are asymptomatic even if it’s 70 or 80 per cent. That’s a lot of people who think they don’t have Covid … so the actual ­number of infections is likely something like 160,000 to 180,000 a day.

“It won’t take long until the virus diminishes the pool of susceptible people, as the next person is infected and the next person, the virus itself is going to make this a short, sharp epidemic.”

Professor Blakely said that though he did not support the “let it rip” strategy adopted by many state and territory governments, it would mean cases could peak in NSW in as soon as two weeks.  “In NSW I don’t think the peak is going to be further away than two weeks, possibly within the next week or so, as it’s chewing through so many people,” he said.

“Victoria will be a week to two behind that and then you can go to other states and territories.”

 

Many world leaders have adopted the same strategy, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declaring that the country could “ride out” the current wave without increasing restrictions, despite the health system becoming “temporarily overwhelmed”.

Britain has recorded well above 200,000 cases a day, and reached its record high of 318,886 on December 27, the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University show.

Deakin University chair Catherine Bennett said she was also predicting that cases would drop off suddenly after reaching a peak, but warned the curve would look different to those overseas due to the states and territories being at different stages.

“When you see a really rapid rise in infectious disease, it gives you hope it’ll burn out quickly,” she said.

“A virus will infect quickly but then run out of people to infect who was susceptible in the community, or it naturally dies out and reaches herd immunity.

“We’ve got different ­vaccin­ation levels in different ­cities. When the virus moved from one state to another it would happen like in South Africa, but locally, so it’ll peak in Newcastle, Sydney and then everywhere else.”