SARS-CoV-2
entered Australia on 15 January
2020. It came here by a commercial passenger jet. It was not
until 25 January 2020 that the infected passenger was diagnosed with
COVID-19 and became our own Patient Zero in Sydney, New South Wales.
That
same day two more airline passengers who disembarked in Sydney were
also diagnosed with COVID-19.
From
the very beginning the public health response of both the Federal and NSW
governments was never as swift and comprehensive as it needed to be.
Indeed,
over the next 15 months it often seemed that Prime Minister &
fundamentalist Liberal Party ideologue Scott Morrison was personally determined to
sabotage any chance of coming through this pandemic with minimal
viral infections, deaths and long-term health problems for those who
recovered from COVID-19.
However,
despite the increasing politicization and weaponing of the public
health response by the Morrison Government, we almost made it through.
By
15 June 2021 Australia had limited infection spread so that the
cumulative total of COVID-19 cases was 30,274 people – just 0.1176%
of the entire population. Sadly the COVID-10 related death toll stood at 910
individuals, but on the other hand there were only 116 active cases
remaining in the entire country and only 26 of these were still sick
enough to require hospitalization. Such outcomes compared favourably with global pandemic data.
On
16 June NSW Health confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant had
been discovered after testing a man from Eastern Sydney. It was then
that first the population of New South Wales and later by the rest of
Australia discovered that, when it came to elected members of the
federal and NSW state governments, there had been no lessons learnt
from the earlier litany of public health blunders.
The
Delta Variant quickly became a state-wide outbreak that was exported
to other states and territories once then NSW Premier & Liberal MP for Willoughby
Gladys Berejiklian – seemingly in thrall to Scott Morrison –
began to insist that communities across the state must learn to ‘live
with COVID’ and that the other states needed to follow her plan to re-open
borders and scale back public health order conditions &
restrictions. Scott Morrison threw his weight behind the only state
premier who agreed with him and COVID-19 infections began to grow and
spread at an alarming rate.
Over
the next 23 weeks the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Australia
grew to a cumulative total of 205,271 people with a COVID-19 related death toll of 1,985
individuals. The number of active cases remaining at the end of that
time numbered 13,492 infected people with 557 ill enough to require
hospitalisation.
There
was a faint light at the end of the tunnel because infection growth
and spread had begun to fall in the state that started the Delta
Outbreak. So that at 8pm on Friday, 26 November 2021 the daily number
of confirmed new cases of COVID-19 in NSW only totalled 235 people
with 174 COVID-19 cases currently hospitalized and, 26 people in
intensive care 10 of whom require ventilation.
Two
days later NSW Health heralded the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron
Variant after passengers who disembarked in Sydney from southern
Africa on 28 November 2021 had tested positive for COVID-19 and their test results were being sequenced for this new variant.
The
most charitable explanation for what happened next was that the
entire NSW Government mindlessly panicked and, with new Premier & fundamentalist Liberal Party ideologue Dominic Perrottet at the helm, decided to
treat this new outbreak in the making as a purely political and
economic issue. Scott Morrison encouraged this approach just as he
had encouraged open borders, lowering public health order
restrictions and living with COVID.
This
time Morrison appears to have gone further behind closed doors at the
so-called National Cabinet meetings – rumours of verbal abuse, political threats
and threats of financial sanctions by the federal government began to
filter out.
By
15 December 2021 there was little left of what had always been an inchoate national public health
response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, the states
had begun to follow New South Wales down the rabbit hole Scott Morrison
had so industriously dug.
On
31 December 2021 the national cumulative total of confirmed COVID-19
cases had grown to 395,504 people or 1.536% of the entire population. And
tellingly, est. 190,233 more people had fallen ill over the space of the
last 5 weeks. The cumulative national COVID-19 related death toll stood at 2,239
individuals. Active cases numbered 137,752 and current
hospitalizations 1,591.
By
1 January 2022 that 190,233 figure appeared to have grown to 225,560
additional confirmed COVID-19 cases in Australia in the space of the
last 5 weeks.
When 2 January arrived there was more unwelcome news. As at 8pm the number of additional confirmed COVID-19 cases in the last 5 weeks had grown to est. 257,194 people nationally.
The national daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases on 2 January was given as 32,354 people and the number of active cases as est, 188,957 individuals. Currently 1,978 infected people were ill enough to require hospitalisation (1,204 of those being inpatients in NSW hospitals), 148 being in ICUs (95 in NSW) and 51 being ventilated (25 in NSW).
While the cumulative national total confirmed cases according to the Australian Dept. of Health was 462,928 and total deaths since January 2020 were recorded as 2,258 men, women and children.
Unfortunately, after 23 months of community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 , an erratic national public health response and a political response in recent months which has the effect of limiting community access to PCR tests & rapid antigen self- testing kits, the recorded tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases no longer represents a true and accurate total of the number of people who actually contracted the virus. The degree of undetected infection and the under reporting in official data to date has not been publicly quantified in Australia, but there is some suggestion that it could currently be somewhere between 20-25% and up to 50% for the latter part of December 2021. These percentages have the potential to impact on government's ability to assess probability and risk going forward into 2022.
Regions, local government areas and communities across Australia are in uncharted waters. It might never be possible to walk back the current high infection rate in the foreseeable future and, February 2022 may bring a new normal that is debilitating to national, state and regional economies, the public health system and social cohesion.
Now
one can argue about the level of virulence attached to the Omicron
Variant and about whether cumulative, active, hospitalised or death
toll numbers are important markers. However, what cannot be denied is
that everyone of these active cases on any given day represents over
time; a potential or real loss of productivity at state and national level, changes in the pattern of business profitability, yo-yoing consumer confidence, a decrease in
tourism & hospitality turnover and an assault on the collective sense of safety and wellbeing. As well as a very real possibility
that how Australian citizen’s cast their ballot at elections held
in 2022 may be very different from past years.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the first two days of 2022 Northern NSW Local Health District where this blog is situated had recorded a total of 715 new confirmed COVID-19 cases across the 7 local government areas and, reported up to 19 people in hospital with 4 in intensive care.
- Ballina
Shire
– 108 cases
- Clarence Valley – 76 cases
- Richmond
Valley
– 14 cases
TOTAL 715
Sources
