Fortress Australia strategy must end, says Dale Fisher

Australia has ‘painted itself into a corner’ through its pandemic eradication strategy and risks being caught in a prolonged tail-end, watching on as the rest of the world reopens.

Infectious disease specialist Dale Fisher in Singapore. Picture: Paul Miller

Australia has “painted itself into a corner” through its pandemic eradication strategy and risks being caught in a prolonged tail-end, watching on as the rest of the world reopens for business, holidays and family reunions.

Dale Fisher, a prominent regional infectious disease specialist and an adviser on Singapore’s pandemic strategy, says Australia must begin to discuss an exit strategy from the model that has served it well but threatens to ­become a serious disadvantage.

“Australia has to have a really strategic discussion with its communities and remove this zero tolerance for cases,” the Melbourne-born Professor Fisher said.

“There has to be a time when Australia decides it’s going to tolerate cases, some hospitalisations and some deaths. We did very well from a health perspective through the worst part of the pandemic, but we don’t want the tail of this pandemic to go on for years.

“It seems the strategy is to wait until everybody is vaccinated and then open the doors and everything will be all right. It’s easy to get to the first 30 to 40 per cent, but I don’t think everybody will get vaccinated.”

The warning coincides with the end of an unprecedented fortnight-long ban on Australian citizens in India returning home on threat of imprisonment and massive fines under the country’s Biosecurity Act.

With just 2.9 million vaccination jabs administered so far, Professor Fisher said Australia was not ready to reopen borders but should be discussing at what point of the vaccination program it could ease some border restrictions, perhaps beginning with home isolation for vaccinated ­arrivals.

“I think Australia is significantly painted into a corner of enjoying the success of health ­efforts to date, taking the hit ­socially and economically,” he said. “But the tables could turn and they could end up watching business, life, holidays, family ­reunions happen in the rest of the world while they still can’t visit children overseas or have big gatherings.”

At its current vaccination rate, the 40 million doses required to fully vaccinate Australia’s adult population would be completed by late April 2023 — two years from now.

Many countries further down the vaccination road were now wrestling with how to reach a remaining 40 to 50 per cent of populations, and going to “extraordinary efforts” to get vaccination levels as high as 70 per cent, which might be the best most nations achieve.

In the US, where more than 55 per cent of adults have received at least one jab and almost 40 per cent are fully vaccinated, some states are offering incentives, from free beers to million-dollar lottery jackpots, to get reluctant citizens to take the jab.

Professor Fisher acknowledged there was minimal public appetite for reopening borders, particularly amid India’s ongoing horror second wave, though cautioned against comparing Australia and India given its population density, and huge health infrastructure challenges.

“There is much greater ­capacity to keep transmissions down in Australia, rather than keep it at zero which lockdowns deliver,” he said.