of Australia’s population was in lockdown last week, as parts of New South Wales, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland enacted strict coronavirus restrictions.
But this angst-driven reaction of locking down with low community transmission of COVID is not a viable long-term strategy. This is because the coronavirus is increasingly likely to become endemic, meaning it will settle into the human population.
Vaccination markedly reduces your chance of getting severely ill and dying from COVID. Vaccination also reduces transmission to some extent. As vaccination rates start to climb, we need to start moving to a calmer, more planned and balanced strategy to help us all learn to live with the virus.
That needs a simultaneous focus on achieving high vaccination rates as fast as possible, while continuing with a consistent strategy of test, trace and isolate. Instead of daily announcements of new cases at press conferences, we should start reporting on vaccination rates and on severe outcomes like hospitalisations and deaths.
Last month Singapore announced its long-term strategy to prepare the country for life with COVID as a recurring, controllable disease. And last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a similar four-phase plan for Australia.
