Now that Melbourne’s stage 4 lockdown has been in place for two weeks, experts have modelled where the state will be at the end of six weeks and when restrictions can be lifted.
Economist and modeller Professor Quentin Grafton of Australian National University told news.com.au that stage 4 was working but it was unlikely coronavirus case numbers would get down to zero by September 13.
“If the goal is no community transmission, our modelling is telling us that six weeks is not enough,” Prof Grafton said.
Even with these restrictions, Prof Grafton expects there will be a “long tail” of cases.
“The number of cases will still be positive for a considerable number of weeks.”
He said the case numbers in Victoria were fairly consistent with what their models had predicted so far, although decisions about whether to extend the lockdown should be made on actual data closer to the end date, rather than relying on models.
At this stage, Prof Grafton believes it is still possible for Victoria to achieve “no community transmission” but it may require a couple of extra weeks of stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne.
“We would suggest that at least eight weeks would be required, but the additional two weeks does have a large pay-off,” he said.
Prof Grafton said his modelling was a joint effort between epidemiologists, health experts and economists, and found it would be better for the economy if Victoria got down to zero cases.
This is because once cases were under control then there could be less social distancing restrictions required in the longer term.
“If you no longer have community transmission then you can open up the economy and this will have fewer costs over a 12 month period,” Prof Grafton said.
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“The last thing we want to happen is for restrictions to be relaxed, for people to go back to work and to start seeing cases again, and to get back on this rollercoaster or yoyo again.
“If there are still new cases (in September) I think the right call is to continue stage 4 in Melbourne until there are zero cases.”
While Prof Grafton doesn’t think it’s necessary for cases to be zero for 28 days to ensure elimination is achieved, he believes stage 4 restrictions shouldn’t be eased until the state records at least some days of zero cases.
“What we’ve seen in Victoria and around the world is that as long as we have community transmission, there is a real likelihood that COVID will come back,” he said.
“If we get to no community transmission then less social distancing will be required over the next 12 months.
“We are actually better off taking that extra couple of weeks to get to no community transmission.”
THE ALTERNATIVE
If Victoria abandons the goal of “no community transmission”, authorities may chose to relax restrictions even if there are still a low number of cases at the end of the stage 4 lockdown.
So far it’s unclear if authorities have an actual number of cases they are aiming for.
Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely believes there could still be about 50 cases a day in Victoria at the end of six weeks.
“At this rate of progress we’ll be lucky if we are at less than 50 cases a day by the end of the six-week lockdown,” he told news.com.au.
Prof Blakely agrees that six weeks of stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne won’t be enough if the state wants to aim for elimination.
However, he said restrictions could be eased with 50 cases a day as long as the state’s contact tracing was ready to work hard and keep cases to less than 100 a day.
“Maybe that’s where we are headed now,” he said, of a suppression strategy.
“We can take some hope from NSW, which has done extremely well with controlling its incursion to 10, 20 cases a day with light restrictions, contact tracing and luck – there’s always some luck involved.”
However, this could leave Victoria isolated from the rest of Australia because other states and territories except for NSW have mostly eliminated community transmission. NSW also looks to have its outbreak under control and continues to drive case numbers down.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has already said she will keep the state’s border shut until there are no cases of community transmission in NSW and Victoria. Both Tasmania and the Northern Territory say they intend to keep their borders closed for longer.
IS STAGE 3 ENOUGH?
If Melbourne restrictions were pulled back to stage 3 then Prof Grafton believes the amount of social distancing would “not be sufficient” to continue bringing cases down.
“We’ve already tried that, stage 3 was implemented in Melbourne and it didn’t work,” he said.
“People were going to work when they were sick or asymptomatic and infecting workmates,” he said.
“Stage 4 is working because only essential workers are going out, this is suppressing the infection.”
While Melbourne’s stage 4 restrictions feel more strict than the state’s previous lockdown, Prof Grafton says the level of social distancing was actually not as strong.
Analysis has found the social distancing measures put in place in April as part of the state’s first lockdown were actually the best possible and have been used as the benchmark.
The April measures have been given a score of 1.0 on a scale measuring social distancing, which is the highest possible, with 0 being the lowest.
At the moment, Victoria’s social distancing is assessed as being close to 0.8 or 0.9. This is because stage 4 restrictions only apply to Melbourne and the rest of the state is on stage 3 restrictions.
If Melbourne went back to stage 3 then the social distancing would be around 0.6, which is not enough to bring down cases. “It’s not going to work,” Prof Grafton said.
BUT WHAT ABOUT NSW?
Some may point to NSW’s apparent success in bringing down its case numbers despite not introducing a lockdown or mandatory masks. On Tuesday, it recorded just three cases after regularly recording around 20 cases a day once an outbreak was discovered at the Crossroads Hotel.
But Prof Grafton said Victoria’s experience with hidden community transmission had to be kept in mind, and that NSW also had a large casualised workforce in Sydney that posed the same risk as what was present in Victoria.
“Positive cases are always underestimated,” he said.
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He said the first cases in hotel quarantine were infected in May but it wasn’t until mid-June that enough people were diagnosed so authorities were alerted to an outbreak.
This is partly because certain members of the community were reluctant to get tested, possibly because they had casual jobs and didn’t want to take time off work. The introduction of paid pandemic leave from Victorian and Australian governments now addresses this but these payments are not yet available in NSW.
“Victoria was thought to have one of the best testing and tracing systems but it was not enough,” Prof Grafton said.
“I think NSW has learnt from that, it’s doing an effective job testing and tracing but I hope it’s enough.”
NEW ZEALAND SHOWS THE WAY
The resurgence of the virus in New Zealand shows that keeping a lid on COVID won’t be easy even if Australia also manages to eliminate community transmission.
New Zealand managed to go for more than 100 days without any cases of community transmission before recording new cases last week.
Prof Grafton said the Kiwi outbreak highlighted the possibility of leakage in quarantine, although a cause for the outbreak is not yet known and is still being investigated.
“There are always people with special passes (who don’t have to do quarantine) and ways that the virus can come back into the country,” he said.
“Those are critical points and we need to manage those.”
He said Australia may need to be more effective with its quarantine system and not just rely on hotels in metropolitan centres.
“As we go further if someone comes in and is tested positive, they may have to be separated to more secure locations,” he said.
Prof Grafton pointed out that New Zealand had also gone back to pre-COVID levels of restrictions so they were more vulnerable when an outbreak occurred.
However, one thing New Zealand did do which Australia hasn’t, is to act quickly as soon as cases were identified.
“New Zealand imposed a stage 3 lockdown on Auckland within 24 hours,” he said. “That’s the sort of thing that we have to do if we want to sustain elimination and no community transmission. We can’t sit on our hands and investigate for week or two. If we go back to pre-COVID social distancing, we can’t wait a week or two.”
Prof Grafton believes New Zealand’s example shows Australia what it needs to do.
“If there is an outbreak in a state in Australia that doesn’t have community transmission then they would have to go early and go hard so they don’t get a major outbreak.”
Being able to test a lot of people quickly and do contact tracing was also crucial.
“As we learnt in Victoria, once daily case numbers exceed 100 a day, it’s too late as it takes days to contact people,” he said.
“That’s why we have to keep cases low and manageable. If states don’t respond quickly to community transmission, things will get out of hand very quickly.”
‘ENDPOINT IS LOWER NUMBERS'
Last week, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews suggested the goal of elimination was not a real option, despite it being raised as the only way to return to normal life.
“The endpoint is to lower numbers and get numbers as low as possible so that we can have confidence that we can manage the inevitable outbreaks that will occur, and the inevitable transmission that we will see,’’ he said.
Mr Andrews has shied away from guaranteeing that lockdown measures in Melbourne would be eased from mid-September but on Sunday he said he had “cautious optimism”.
“I am always very cautious but there is, on my part at least, a cautious optimism and a sense of real hope that this strategy is working and that we are seeing numbers fall now,” he told reporters.
https://news.google.com/__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?oc=5
2020-08-18 06:39:21Z
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