It was a wave that travelled the country.
In press conference after press conference, Australia's state premiers and chief ministers fronted the cameras to give announcements not seen in some areas of the country for a long time.
Masks, lockdowns, restrictions, infection controls, hotspots.
Experts have labelled this week a "critical moment" of the pandemic, while others say the country's on a "knife's edge", with two states — New South Wales and Northern Territory — sitting in lockdown and two other states — Western Australia and Queensland — in the midst of unfamiliar community transmission.
And according to those experts, it all comes down to one element:
"[The Delta variant] is a particularly formidable enemy," UNSW epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said.
"It has learned how to be more infectious with less exposure."
Professor McLaws, a World Health Organization advisor, is one of a multitude of infectious disease experts imploring governments to act strong and act fast with the Delta variant.
ABC News: Brendan Esposito
)The variant has been found in more than 80 countries since it was first detected in India, and has infected millions across the world.
Locally, the variant triggered the Bondi cluster, which quickly spread to 130 cases, and travelled around the country. And according to health authorities in New South Wales, cases are set to grow this week.
Professor Mikhail Prokopenko, a computer scientist from the University of Sydney who modelled last year's initial outbreak, said it was "too early" to predict the movement of the infection curve in Sydney.
But, he said, Delta was "obviously a much more contagious variant".
"It's twice as contagious as the original virus," he said. "We estimated a 2.75 basic reproduction number (R naught) for the original, so I would say this one is 5.5 to 6, roughly speaking.
"Compared to say India or the UK [where the variant took hold] our population is not as dense, but the biological component is the same.
Reuters: Amit Dave
)"Last year, we estimated that to really flatten the curve social distancing was required for 80 to 90 per cent of the population, now [with Delta] it would need to be more complete. So you're running out of options here."
Professor Prokopenko said without a lockdown in Sydney, "we wouldn't have been able to stop it".
Professor Raina MacIntyre, head of the Kirby Institute's Biosecurity Research Program at the University of New South Wales, told the ABC the country was still at more risk of a larger outbreak.
"But if by the end of this week we see [a trend] where numbers are coming down, it may be enough, but if they're not, then it may not be."
A new phase?
As Australia remains committed to COVID-zero, experts say outbreaks — and the hard-nosed government response — look set to continue until at least the latter half of the year, when a larger chunk of the population is set to be offered vaccination.
Professor Brendan Crabb, director and chief executive of the Burnet Institute, told the ABC it all came back to the "blind spot" of hotel quarantine.
"There is no way we are surviving through September or October plain sailing unless we fix the leaks," he said. "And we seem a long way from doing that.
"It is a crisis."
Speaking on the latest outbreak, Professor Crabb said the country had "no choice" but to "put the genie back in the bottle".
"I think it will take the best part of a week and we will especially have to see whether the lockdown levers are strong enough, [I] sure hope they are.
"In Victoria, we have been through a second wave with a different strain and we had to use pretty tough measures in this town to defeat that.
"It will be harder in Sydney. That is what I will watch for in the course of a week for going in the right direction, it is not clear to me that this is going to be beaten easily."
The way out?
According to Professor McLaws, with the much more transmissible variant and low vaccination rates, there was no possibility of easing lockdowns while there were any cases in a city.
"You have to go for zero [cases] and you have to have zero for a few days," she said.
"I fully appreciate that lockdowns are horrible, they are the least acceptable approach to control."
But she said there were few other options, "when Australia has leaky quarantine programs with poor vaccination programs to frontline workers and gaps in the testing".
Looking further ahead, the experts — and politicians such as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian — all agreed that an increased vaccination rate was the only true way out.
Catherine Bennett, the head of epidemiology at Deakin University, told ABC Radio that Australia was increasingly reaching the point where maintaining COVID zero was "going to be difficult".
Supplied: Simon Fox
)"And it really does shift the emphasis on to the speed and pace of a vaccine rollout," she said.
"That will make all the difference."
Professor Brendan Crabb agreed.
"It is now plain as day that we are in a very dangerous period," he said.
"The first thing is to make sure [we achieve] our first two goals, which is to get people over 60 especially fully vaccinated — they are the ones most at risk of severe disease — and get those on the frontline, healthcare workers and aged care workers and hotel quarantine workers vaccinated.
"We have enough vaccine to do it, and that should happen."
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2021-06-28 18:52:46Z
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