"Not only are so many older people I know very anxious about catching COVID because we value our lives, we are sick of being treated like we don’t matter. We are fed up with our lives being viewed as expendable".
— OWN NSW (@age_no_barrier) December 30, 2021
President of National OWN's Letter to https://t.co/eNKYO7IdVu pic.twitter.com/M1QjuGjMRa
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| IMAGE: ALJAZERRA, 30 November 2021 |
Just two days ago Scott Morrison stood in front of the cameras:
Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Women, Minister for Health and Aged Care, Minister for Home Affairs, Joint Media Statement, 29 November 2021, excerpt:
On the basis of medical advice provided by the Chief Medical Officer of Australia, Professor Paul Kelly, the National Security Committee has taken the necessary and temporary decision to pause the next step to safely reopen Australia to international skilled and student cohorts, as well as humanitarian, working holiday maker and provisional family visa holders from 1 December until 15 December.
The reopening to travellers from Japan and the Republic of Korea will also be paused until 15 December.
The temporary pause will ensure Australia can gather the information we need to better understand the Omicron variant, including the efficacy of the vaccine, the range of illness, including if it may generate more mild symptoms, and the level of transmission.
Australia’s border is already closed to travellers except fully vaccinated Australian citizens, permanent residents and immediate family, as well as fully vaccinated green lane travellers from New Zealand and Singapore and limited exemptions.
All arrivals to Australia also require a negative PCR test and to complete Australian traveller declaration forms detailing their vaccination status and confirming requirements to comply with state and territory public health requirements…..
New Zealand currently has a LEVEL 4 (RED) Travel Advisory Alert on Australia warning that if its citizens travel they may have difficulty with being allowed back into New Zealand at a future date and, since 8 November 2021 Singapore has allowed fully vaccinated travellers from Australia to enter Singapore without quarantine, for all purposes of travel.
It is possible that both countries may temporarily close their borders to Australia if community transmission of the Omicron Variant begins in New South Wales.
However, as a suspicion grows around the world that the Omicron Variant has been 'in the wild' for much longer than originally suspected and its community transmission masked by cases being misdiagnosed as Delta Variant, border closures at this stage are thought unlikely to keep SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant out of a country. Rather such closures might at this point only slow down the international mobility of this variant.
Then there is this.....
Reuters, 30 November 2021:
SYDNEY, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The head of drugmaker Moderna (MRNA.O) said COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to be as effective against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus as they have been previously, sparking fresh worry in financial markets about the trajectory of the pandemic.
"There is no world, I think, where (the effectiveness) is the same level . . . we had with Delta," Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview.
"I think it's going to be a material drop. I just don't know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I've talked to . . . are like 'this is not going to be good.'"
Vaccine resistance could lead to more sickness and hospitalisations and prolong the pandemic, and his comments triggered selling in growth-exposed assets like oil, stocks and the Australian dollar.
Bancel added that the high number of mutations on the protein spike the virus uses to infect human cells meant it was likely the current crop of vaccines would need to be modified.
He had earlier said on CNBC that it could take months to begin shipping a vaccine that does work against Omicron.
BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have all begun working on vaccines that specifically target Omicron in case their existing COVID-19 vaccines are not effective against the new variant.
In Australia the Morrison Government is not yet acknowledging this situation but rather arguing about whether or not to bring forward booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccines as a way of countering Omicron Variant infection.
On 30 November 2021 Australia's total number of known SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant cases stood at six individuals.
BACKGROUND
World Health Organisation, WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the Special Session of the World Health Assembly - 29 November 2021, excerpt:
More than any humans in history, we have the ability to anticipate pandemics, to prepare for them, to unravel the genetics of pathogens, to detect them at their earliest stages, to prevent them spiralling into global disasters, and to respond when they do.
And yet here we are, entering the third year of the most acute health crisis in a century, and the world remains in its grip.
This pestilence – one that we can prevent, detect and treat – continues to cast a long shadow over the world.
Instead of meeting in the aftermath of the pandemic, we are meeting as a fresh wave of cases and deaths crashes into Europe, with untold and uncounted deaths around the world.
And although other regions are seeing declining or stable trends, if there’s one thing we have learned, it’s that no region, no country, no community and no individual is safe until we are all safe.
The emergence of the highly-mutated Omicron variant underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is.
South Africa and Botswana should be thanked for detecting, sequencing and reporting this variant, not penalized.
Indeed, Omicron demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics: our current system disincentivizes countries from alerting others to threats that will inevitably land on their shores.
We don’t yet know whether Omicron is associated with more transmission, more severe disease, more risk of reinfections, or more risk of evading vaccines. Scientists at WHO and around the world are working urgently to answer these questions.
We shouldn’t need another wake-up call; we should all be wide awake to the threat of this virus.
But Omicron’s very emergence is another reminder that although many of us might think we are done with COVID-19, it is not done with us. ……
Full speech can be read here.
World Health Organisation, 29 November 2021:
Given mutations that may confer immune escape potential and possibly transmissibility advantage, the likelihood of potential further spread of Omicron at the global level is high.
Depending on these characteristics, there could be future surges of COVID‐19, which could have severe consequences, depending on a number of factors including where surges may take place. The overall global risk related to the new VOC Omicron is assessed as very high.
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| IMAGE: Courier Mail, 29 November 2021 |
Genomic testing has confirmed two more overseas travellers, who recently arrived in New South Wales, have been infected with the Sars-CoV-2 Omicron variant of concern. The total number of confirmed cases of Omicron Variant infection is now four individuals in this state within two days.
The Omicron Variant first entered NSW when two infected individuals flew into Sydney International Airport on Qatar Airways QR908, Doha to Sydney, at 7:06 pm on 27 November 2021, after travelling from an unspecified country or countries in southern Africa. Both people had previously been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The second two infected people arrived on Singapore Airlines SQ 211 at Sydney International Airport at 9:20pm on 28 November 2021 – after travelling through an unspecified country or countries in southern Africa.
A fifth individual infected with the Omicron Variant had flown into Darwin Airport from Johannesburg, South Africa on 25 November 2021, presumably on a Qantas international flight.
All five people were taken into quarantine – four at Special Health Accommodation in the Sydney area and one at the Centre for National Resilience in the Darwin area.
Out of the 11 SARS-CoV-2 variants being monitored, to date Australia has only reported 5 surfacing in this country:
B.1.1.7 (Alpha ) B.1.351 ( Beta) P.1 (Gamma ) B.1.617.2 (Delta) B.1.1.529 (Omicron). Only Delta and Omicron remain cause for concern.
As yet little is known about the Omicron Variant's reproduction rate, incubation period, or the level of illness it is likely to cause those it infects.
Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison states he plans to call a meeting of state and territory leaders today or tomorrow to discuss how to respond to the Omicron variant, but it is "too early" to make decisions about reinstating quarantine before Christmas.
I rather think there will be a mixed reaction from States and Territories to his urging them to rigidly adhere to his own reopening timetable for internal & international borders, as well as for lessening of public health measures and the cessation of hotel quarantine.
Only Queensland & the Northern Territory have the luxury of a basic quarantine station each. For the remaining states and territory it’s hotel or home quarantine, with the difficulties these bring.
In fact, NSW was still using the COVID-19 hotel quarantine system from 21 to 27 November 2021 and, is hardly likely to feel comfortable with home quarantine until it knows more about the virulence and transmissibility levels of Omicron.
Australian Dept. Of Health table showing the number of cases (predominately involving Delta Variant) and source of infection between 22 November and 28 November 2021:
The Daily Examiner online, 25 November 2021:
Mr Mundine was fined in July last year for failing to comply with public health orders and failing to comply with a noticed direction.
He was subsequently issued with a court attendance notice for charges of not complying with a noticed direction and failing to comply with a public health order.
The charges came after police investigated reports the 46-year-old had attended a licenced premises in Yamba, NSW.
At the time of the incident, travel outside of Sydney, where Mr Mundine lives, was banned under strict lockdown measures unless people had an exemption.
Mr Mundine pleaded not guilty to not complying with a noticed direction, while the second charge was later withdrawn.
Mr Mundine’s matter was mentioned in Maclean Local Court on Thursday.
His lawyer John Giang applied for the matter to be adjourned a further three weeks to December 16.
Mr Mundine did not appear in court for the matter.
THE STORY SO FAR.......
NSW Health, media release 28 November 2021:
Omicron variant in confirmed NSW cases
NSW Health can confirm urgent genomic testing undertaken today shows two overseas travellers have been infected with the new Omicron B.1.1.529 COVID-19 variant of concern.
Both passengers came to Sydney from southern Africa on the evening of Saturday November 27. They underwent testing on arrival and tested positive for COVID-19 late last night.
The two positive cases, who were asymptomatic, are in isolation in the Special Health Accommodation. Both people are fully vaccinated.
The two passengers were amongst fourteen people from southern Africa who arrived on Qatar Airways QR908, Doha to Sydney, which arrived around 7pm, Saturday November 27.
The remaining 12 passengers from southern Africa are undertaking 14 days of hotel quarantine in the Special Health Accommodation.
Around 260 passengers and air crew on the flight are considered close contacts and have been directed to isolate.
It is an offence not to comply with a Public Health Order and penalties can apply. Close contacts will be contacted regularly, and compliance checks will be undertaken.
In line with Commonwealth measures, all travellers arriving in NSW who have been in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini, Malawi, and the Seychelles during the 14 day period before their arrival in NSW must enter hotel quarantine for 14 days, irrespective of their vaccination status.
All travellers who have been in any other overseas country during the 14 day period before their arrival in NSW must travel directly to their place of residence or accommodation and isolate for 72 hours, pending further health advice.
All flight crew who have been overseas during the 14-day period before their arrival in NSW must travel directly to their place of residence or accommodation and isolate for 14 days or until their departure on another flight that leaves Australia, consistent with the current rules for unvaccinated flight crew.
Anyone who has already arrived in NSW who has been in any of the nine African countries within the previous 14 days must immediately get tested and isolate for 14 days, and call NSW Health on 1800 943 553.
Current as at: Sunday 28 November 2021
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NSW recorded 185 new cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm Saturday 27 November 2021.
A total of 2,703 COVD-19 cases are still considered active. Included in this figure are 165 COVID-19 cases currently hospitalized, with 24 people in intensive care, 9 of whom require ventilation.
Across NSW, only 92.5 per cent of people aged 16 and over are fully vaccinated.
Of the 185 cases reported to 8pm on Saturday 27 November, 51 were from South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (LHD), 41 from South Western Sydney LHD, 18 from Western Sydney LHD, 15 from Hunter New England LHD, 14 from Northern Sydney LHD, 12 from Sydney LHD, 9 from Western NSW LHD, 6 from Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD, four from Murrumbidgee LHD, 4 from Southern NSW LHD, 3 from Mid North Coast LHD, 3 from Nepean Blue Mountains LHD, 2 from Central Coast LHD, 1 is in hotel quarantine and 2 are yet to be assigned to a LHD.
Fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19 in sewage samples collected from Cobar, Smithtown and Gladstone where there are currently no known or recent cases.
Both confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant who entered Australia around 7pm on 27 November 2021 aboard Qatar Airways flight QR908 from Doha had been fully COVID-19 vaccinated and, a third person recently arriving in Australia who had travelled briefly into Victoria before returning to NSW is of interest and is being traced.
On the same day the confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant entered the country, Australian Minister for Health & Liberal MP for Flinders Greg Hunt issues a media release concerning changed travel restrictions stating in part:
These actions are taken on the basis of prevention and are considered proportionate to the risk and consistent with actions being considered by other countries.
Effective immediately, anyone who is not a citizen or permanent resident of Australia, or their immediate family including parents of citizens, and who have been in African countries where the Omicron variant has been detected and spread – within the past 14 days – will not be able to enter Australia.
The countries are: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Seychelles, Malawi and Mozambique.
Australian citizens and permanent residents, immediate family members including parents arriving from these countries will need to go into immediate supervised quarantine for 14 days subject to jurisdictional arrangements.
It is noted that, in a fast moving situation, the travel prohibition which includes these 9 countries does not appear to have been expanded to include other countries with confirmed cases of the new highly infectious variant known to have an reproduction rate of 2.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 28 November 2021:
Just weeks after opening the borders, health authorities on Sunday night were scrambling to track down hundreds of overseas passengers who have arrived in NSW over the past fortnight to determine if they are carrying the new COVID-19 variant. A senior member of the government said border settings mean it is possible the strain is already circulating through Australia’s east coast.
As of 28 November 2021 this new SARS-CoV-2 variant has been found in 18 countries:
South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia,
Eswatini, Malawi, Seychelles, Israel, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany,
Czech Republic, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Italy and Australia.
Genomic sequencing to date apparently links all cases outside of the African continent back to travel through southern Africa in November 2021. According to WHO the Omicron Variant was first identified on 22 November in South Africa, from a sample collected from a patient on 9 November.
And the bad news for rural and regional Australia just keeps on coming.....
‘Lead author and CSIRO chief climate research scientist Pep Canadell said the study established the correlation between the Forest Fire Danger Index – which measures weather-related vegetation dryness, air temperature, wind speed and humidity – and the rise in area of forest burned since the 1930s.
“It’s so tight, it’s so strong that clearly when we have these big fire events, they’re run by the climate and the weather,” Dr Canadell said…
“Almost regardless of what we do the overall extent of the fire, really, is dictated by those climate conditions,” he said.
Climate scientists have found climate change is exacerbating the key fire risk factors identified by CSIRO’s study, with south-eastern Australia becoming hotter, drier and, in a particularly worrying trend, more prone to high wind on extremely hot and dry summer days.
The weather system that drove a blast furnace’s worth of westerly wind across NSW and Victoria’s forests, sparking some of the worst fires of the Black Summer in 2019-20, will be up to four times more likely to occur under forecast levels of global warming.’ [The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 November 2021]
Nature.com, Nature Communications, 26 November 2021, article excerpt:
“Multi-decadal increase of forest burned area in Australia is linked to climate change”
Josep G. Canadell, C. P. (Mick) Meyer, Garry D. Cook, Andrew Dowdy, Peter R. Briggs, Jürgen Knauer, Acacia Pepler & Vanessa Haverd
Received 24 July 2020
Accepted 03 November 2021
Published 26 November 2021
ABSTRACT
Fire activity in Australia is strongly affected by high inter-annual climate variability and extremes. Through changes in the climate, anthropogenic climate change has the potential to alter fire dynamics. Here we compile satellite (19 and 32 years) and ground-based (90 years) burned area datasets, climate and weather observations, and simulated fuel loads for Australian forests. Burned area in Australia’s forests shows a linear positive annual trend but an exponential increase during autumn and winter. The mean number of years since the last fire has decreased consecutively in each of the past four decades, while the frequency of forest megafire years (>1 Mha burned) has markedly increased since 2000. The increase in forest burned area is consistent with increasingly more dangerous fire weather conditions, increased risk factors associated with pyroconvection, including fire-generated thunderstorms, and increased ignitions from dry lightning, all associated to varying degrees with anthropogenic climate change.
INTRODUCTION
The extraordinary forest fires in Australia in 2019 and 20201 have brought further interest in detecting changes in fire activity, the possible role of anthropogenic climate change and their likely future trends both in Australia and globally 2,3,4,5,6.
Terrestrial ecosystems in Australia are among the most fire prone in the world, with fire regimes varying widely 7,8. Fire activity is dominated by savanna and rangeland fires in the northern and western parts of the continent characterized by fire return intervals of less than 5 years 7,9. Forests in the east and south have fire return times of decades to more than a century, with subtropical and tropical forests in the northeast burning rarely or not at all 9. Fire, including cultural burns by indigenous people, has shaped the function and structure of most Australian ecosystems for millennia 10,11.
Against this background of fire activity, Australia’s mean temperature has increased by 1.4 °C since 1910 with a rapid increase in extreme heat events, while rainfall has declined in the southern and eastern regions of the continent, particularly during the cool half of the year 12,13,14. These changes can affect the four components that must simultaneously come together for fire to occur: biomass production, its availability to burn (fuel loads), fire weather, and ignition 7, making Australian forests vulnerable and sensitive to changes in fire activity.
Previous studies showed increased fire danger due to changes in weather conditions over past decades in Australia 5,15,16, climate change fingerprinting to individual fire events and trends 17,18,19, and predicted increases in fire danger under future climate change due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases 2,20,21. Although these studies indicate more dangerous weather conditions for wildfires in a warmer world, studies also suggest that trends due to climate change might not be clearly detectable until later in the coming decades owing to the high natural variability and extremes of the Australian climate 4,22,23,24.
Fuel loads and trends, as effected by climate, human activity and time since the last disturbance, also play a role in determining fire risk 25,26. This link is a central motivation for using prescribed burning to reduce fuel availability 27, which in Australia is managed through changes in the frequency of prescribed burns 28. Although there is some debate on their value to reduce fire risk 29, particularly during extreme fire weather conditions 2,30, fuel loads and their distribution and structure are key determinants of fire spread, intensity and severity 7.
Here we analyze trends of the burned area in forest ecosystems in Australia, which are dominated by temperate forests extending over the southern and eastern regions of the continent. We use a high-resolution (1.1 km x 1.1 km) burned area satellite record available based on NOAA-AVHRR (32 years), the NASA-MODIS burned area at 500 m resolution (19 years), and the fire histories from State and Territory government agencies (90 years). In addition, we analyze trends of nine wildfire risk factors and indices that relate to characteristics of fuel loads, fire weather, extreme fire behaviour, and ignition, which together with the burned area enable us to infer the causal influence of climate change on fire activity.
RESULTS
Trends in area burned
At a continental scale, total annual burned area (fire year defined as July to June to include the Austral summer of December to February) using the NOAA-AVHRR dataset (“Methods”: Burned area data), significantly increased over the past 32 years albeit with large interannual variability (Fig. 1a; Linear fit, p value = 0.04, Supplementary Table 1). The high variability is in part driven by large-scale modes of atmospheric and oceanic variability such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annual Mode 31,32 that influence fire weather conditions 16,22. Nine out of the 11 fire years, each with more than 500,000 km2 (>50 Mha) burned, occurred since 2000.
Forest ecosystems also show increased burned area over time (Fig. 1b, linear fit, p value = 0.02, Supplementary Table 1; Fig. 2). The increasing trend is statistically significant with and without the 2019 fire year, indicating a robust increasing trend even before the extraordinary large burned area of that year (Supplementary Table 1). Forests in Australia experienced an annual average increase of 350% in burned area between the first (1988-2001) and second (2002-2018) half of the record, and an increase of 800% when including 2019. The 2019 fire year burned about three times (60,345 km2) the area of any previous year in the 32-year AVHRR-Landgate record (Fig. 3, Supplementary Fig. 1, “Methods”: Burned area). The burned area of the 2019 fire year was estimated at 71,772 km2 based on State and Territory agencies (NIAFED) and 54,852 km2 based on NASA-MODIS, with an average for the three products of 62,323 ± 8,631. Ten out of eleven fire years with at least 5000 km2 (>0.5 Mha) burned have occurred since 2001. These trends are broadly consistent across the three burned area products (Supplementary Fig. 1).
Fig. 2: Monthly burned forest area for fire years (July to June).
The NSW Government has taken precautionary steps in relation to quarantine arrangements for overseas arrivals following the introduction of additional national border security measures by the Australian Government.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the new measures would help keep people safe as we work through this latest development with COVID.
“Authorities around the world are still investigating the risk posed by this new variant,” Mr Perrottet said.
“As a result, the NSW Government will continue to put community safety first by taking these precautionary but important steps until more information becomes available.”
The new measures, which will take effect at midnight tonight, are:
Minister for Health Brad Hazzard said no cases of the Omicron variant have been identified in NSW to date, but urged everyone to stay vigilant.
“I remind the community that vaccination, social distancing and hand hygiene remain our best defence against COVID,” Mr Hazzard said.
Public health advice on quarantine arrangements and isolation requirements will be provided as soon as new information emerges on the risk posed by the new variant and the extent of its international transmission.
People can get the latest information by visiting nsw.gov.au.
The Morrison Government is also applying Omicron Variant state & territory isolate &/or quarantine restrictions to people, for instance international students and skilled migrants, arriving from the safe travel zones established with New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Republic of Korea, who have been in any of the nine countries within the past 14 days.
As well as suspending all flights from the nine southern African countries for a period of 14 days as a matter of precaution.
BACKGROUND
The Guardian UK, 27 November 2021:
B.1.1.529 has a very unusual constellation of mutations, which are worrying because they could help it evade the body’s immune response and make it more transmissible, scientists have said. Any new variant that is able to evade vaccines or spread faster than the now-dominant Delta variant may pose a significant threat as the world emerges from the pandemic.
Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency, said the R value, or effective reproduction number, of the B.1.1.529 variant in the South African province of Gauteng, where it was first found, was now 2 – a level of transmission not recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, before restrictions began to be imposed. For an R of anything above 1, an epidemic will grow exponentially.....
Senior scientists on Thursday evening described B.1.1.529 as the worst variant they had seen since the start of the pandemic. It has 32 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that most vaccines use to prime the immune system against Covid. That is about double the number associated with the Delta variant. Mutations in the spike protein can affect the virus’s ability to infect cells and spread, but also make it harder for immune cells to attack the pathogen.
As of 28 November 2021 this new variant has been found in 15 countries - South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini, Malawi, Seychelles, Israel, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, with limited genomic sequencing to date apparently linking all cases outside of the African continent back to travel through southern Africa.
UPDATE
#BREAKING New #COVID19 variant 'probably' among 61 passengers from South Africa who tested positive for the virus: Dutch health authority pic.twitter.com/vKdyLiQeKw
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) November 27, 2021
'Urgent' genomic testing underway in Sydney after two positive COVID cases on flights arriving from Southern Africa.
— Latika M Bourke (@latikambourke) November 27, 2021
They are in hotel quarantine. #omicron pic.twitter.com/XWYHV2v1Vv
