Australia’s slow vaccination campaign has now become a sprint as the country tries to contain a severe Covid-19 outbreak.
`Our goal is to live with viruses, not live in fear of them,` Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on August 23.
`We have to break this vicious cycle,` Morrison said of states having to repeatedly close and open because of Covid-19.
Australia is not the first country to abandon its once successful `zero Covid` approach, as the Delta variant is harder to deal with and vaccination rates are increasing.
But in Australia, the `zero Covid` approach has become something like a belief.
However, that consensus has appeared to crack in recent weeks, as arguments began to emerge between states with serious Covid-19 outbreaks and areas with almost no epidemic.
A woman walks on an empty street because of the blockade in Melbourne, Victoria state on July 16.
In Sydney, where one case of infection in mid-June has now skyrocketed to about 750 cases per day last week, state officials emphasized the need to switch to a strategy of living with the epidemic, instead of `erasing the virus`.
`I just urge people not to be psychologically affected by the number of infections every day. What is really important for us is to focus on increasing vaccination rates,` New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian
Australia’s vaccination rate is rising, especially in NSW, where the number of injections per day has tripled, making it one of the highest in the world.
At the same time, the patience of people in the epidemic states is gradually weakening with the prolonged blockade.
`We cannot live in isolation forever,` Berejiklian said.
However, for states with few or no cases, a `zero Covid` strategy still seems like a good solution.
In Queensland state, which recorded only two cases on August 24, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she could not open the state border with NSW even after the country reached the vaccination threshold.
Both Palaszczuk and McGowan last month agreed with Prime Minister Morrison’s four-phase reopening plan, including relaxing the statewide blockade when 70% of the Australian population is vaccinated.
However, Palaszczuk said everything changed when the outbreak in Sydney shattered the 30-case scenario that the plan had outlined.
The research institute that outlined the model for the four-phase reopening plan affirms that hundreds of infections per day are not a barrier to reopening safely.
According to them, without large outbreaks to promote vaccination, Queensland and Western Australia would have fallen behind in the vaccine deployment campaign and may have to delay national reopening plans.
Some premiers are concerned that the plan to exit the blockade will be affected by political factors, when Australia will hold elections early next year and Covid-19 will be a central issue.
Morrison warned state and territory leaders not to walk away from `a deal with the Australian people`, while Treasurer Josh Frydenberg threatened to block some federal support for states that do not open as planned
But not only the premiers, many epidemiologists are also skeptical about Prime Minister Morrison’s plan to open the country.
`It’s not based on logic,` said Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO).
She added that one problem is that Australia’s national reopening plan does not take into account the more contagious Delta variant.
Prime Minister Morrison’s plan also means Australia can open up the country when many vulnerable indigenous communities have not yet been vaccinated, according to McLaws.
McLaws was the one who advocated locking down Sydney as soon as the first case of the Delta strain appeared in June, while Prime Minister Morrison waited another 10 days to make the decision to blockade.
Thanh Tam (According to Washington Post)
