NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the state's "outstanding" vaccination rate means residents are a step closer to freedom, despite 818 new COVID-19 infections being recorded.

• From today all of NSW must wear masks outside their home and curfews are in place for LGAs of concern
• The Premier says she wants people to focus on vaccine numbers, not case numbers
• NSW is on track to hit its target of 6 million vaccine doses a week earlier than expected

NSW has passed 5.9 million vaccinations, 738,000 of which were administered last week.

Ms Berejiklian said NSW's vaccination rate was among the highest in the world, with the state expected to reach its target of 6 million jabs "at least a week early". 

The Premier said the target would prompt some restrictions to be eased for some people, and that specifics would be revealed later this week.

"We will be able to communicate what additional freedom people may have once they get to full vaccination and during September, and we will outline our plan for schools," she said.

Both are a work in progress and we are consulting with the chief psychiatrist as well as the public health team to get the right balance."

Ms Berejiklian acknowledged NSW residents may be going through "the rollercoaster of emotions" as case numbers fluctuate.

"I don't want us to focus so much on the numbers going up and down," she said.

"We want to see them go down, no doubt about that, and we're working so hard to make it possible, but the number we need to focus on is the vaccination rate."

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/nsw-records-818-covid-19-cases-and-three-deaths/100398366

Not 69.7 %, nor 71.2 % but exactly 70 % for giving you a freedom lolly... Thumbs up, vaxed people, you deserve a kiss... Be careful though... Kiss with your mask on... or you could end up in an awkward situation like Obama trying to kiss Aung San Suu Kyi ...

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Australia was in a world-leading position on managing COVID last year and squandered it.

And now continues to do so with small-minded, inward-looking debate while the world moves forward.

Fortress Australia is not just physical, in the form of all but closed borders, but mental and emotional, as we and our leaders choose to reinvent processes and debate that have already been had elsewhere.

Instead of taking advantage of international advances and knowledge that may allow us to accelerate towards normality, we choose to argue among ourselves.

In doing so, we further slow down our exit from the mire amid stalled conversation around ‘living with COVID’, vaccinating teenagers and children and speeding up recovery while updating our vaccine program and community restrictions to be nimble enough to keep pace with the virus.

We frame lockdowns as binary, without acknowledging the obvious fact that as vaccination increases, lockdowns and masking will become tools that can be implemented at varying levels and locations to manage what will be ongoing COVID outbreaks.

This is already the international experience.

But we are months behind in both our decision-making and our attitude.

In large part, this is to do with continued undersupply of vaccine.

It’s also to do with the reluctance of many of our leaders to make decisions of any kind for fear that they turn out to be wrong later.

Vaccination and lockdowns continue to be politicised as federal and state governments shift blame back and forth, confusing expectations and further eroding any remaining shreds of public trust.

Meanwhile, progress is being made elsewhere.

I use the United States as an example, only because I have lived there recently and therefore have been watching it closely.

There, 73.2 per cent of adults have had one shot. Some 63 per cent are fully vaccinated.

From September 20 the US government will begin to rollout a third, booster vaccine dose to all eligible Americans based on what the US Centre for Disease Control says is “very clear” evidence that immunity starts to fall after the initial two doses, especially in the face of the Delta variant.

Israel became the first country to offer booster shots at the end of July, with encouraging signs that it’s helping manage a fast-spreading Delta outbreak. The UK is also expected to offer boosters beginning next month. Our neighbour Cambodia, which has fully vaccinated more than 8 million people, or roughly half its population so far, is already giving boosters.

Yet, here in Australia, we continue to debate whether or when a third dose is needed as those who will hit the eight-month trigger point for a booster well before Christmas threaten to overtake those who have yet to have even one shot.

Meanwhile, as the Americans test the safety in preparation for vaccinating children under 12, we continue to dither on when even children 12-15 should get the vaccine based on a woolly debate about just how sick they may, or may not, get.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has finally recommended that adolescents get the vaccine, but how urgent a priority they are for governments is a different question.

Vaccination for children 12 and older was approved in the US in mid-May, and since then about half of teenagers have had one shot. In some (progressive) American states the rate is as high as 74 per cent.

US experts accept that a combination of apathy, hesitancy and outright refusal means that a portion of adults will not have the vaccine.

Therefore, with about 202 million people in the US vaccinated with one dose so far, children will need to be included in the vaccine program to help reduce spread and severity.

Some US experts suggest that only 90 per cent vaccination of the population, including children, would achieve herd immunity. The 70-80 per cent ‘freedom threshold’ that’s being parlayed here as the government continues to grapple with lagging supply, excludes children under 16.

New modelling suggests cases per day could surge into the tens of thousands if lockdown is wholly lifted even when adult vaccination hits that threshold.

My children went to school in Maryland for four years, and most of their friends had two doses of vaccine months ago.

School is set to cautiously re-open next week and community sport is on, even in the face of Delta.

Restrictions, of sorts, ebb and flow across the US depending on case numbers and the political leanings of state governors. In that sense, we have our similarities.

But having had to live with the worst of the virus, Americans have adapted.

This, from a friend in the US this week.

“Hey. You guys going nuts? How many lockdowns have u had? The kid likes to run…”

‘The kid’ is my 14-year-old son, and the friend is the father of one of his US soccer teammates. With the whole family fully vaccinated, they’re just back from a summer trip to Germany.

‘What’s going on down there?’ is the prevailing question.

Much of the above is due to lack of vaccine supply in Australia.

And let’s assume, or at least hope, that will soon be resolved, but increased supply of vaccine won’t inoculate us from inward looking thinking.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2021/08/28/zoe-daniel-covid-australia/

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New South Wales has lost control of contact tracing, putting Australia’s plan to reopen in jeopardy if the state cannot get COVID case numbers under control, infectious disease experts have warned.

NSW Health announced Friday it would no longer report the number of linked and unlinked COVID-19 cases and their isolation status.

“With current case volumes, this data is not a meaningful representation of case investigations,” the government body said.

NSW’s overwhelmed contact tracing system puts Australia in a precarious position, warned infectious diseases expert Allan Saul, a senior research fellow at the Burnet Institute.

The Doherty Institute modelling, which underpins national cabinet’s four-phase plan for reopening Australia, relies on exceptionally good contact tracing, Professor Saul said.

The announcement by NSW Health to not include the number of unlinked cases “implies contact tracing is not working well,” he said.

The Doherty Institute modelling shows that with just a 12 per cent dip in  “optimal” contact tracing Australian cities would need a Melbourne-styled ‘stage four’ lockdown to gain control of any outbreak.

“I think the contact tracing in Sydney has degraded much more than 12 per cent,” Professor Saul said.

NSW’s ongoing Delta outbreak threatens to derail national cabinet’s four-stage plan, which was agreed upon by all states and territories.

The plan involves the easing of restrictions, most notably lockdowns, when the national vaccination rate reaches 70 to 80 per cent of Australians over the age of 16.

Vaccinating 70 per cent of everyone over 16 equates to vaccinating 56 per cent of the total Australian population.

The premiers of Queensland and Western Australia have both expressed concern there are currently too many cases in the community to open borders in line with national cabinet’s plan.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) this week recommended the use of the Pfizer vaccine for kids aged 12-15 years.

To reopen Australia with cases in the hundreds each day would be setting the nation up for horror scenes, Professor Saul said.

“We don’t need models, we can see it around the world. On Thursday, the United Kingdom had 38,000 cases of COVID-19, 1000 hospital emissions and 140 deaths,” he said.

There are effectively two scenarios for managing COVID: one where there is no community transmission and the other where there is transmission on the scale seen in the UK, Professor Saul said.

He said the challenge for Australia was to get case numbers down and get the population vaccinated – not merely at the government’s current targets of 70 and 80 per cent of the population aged 16+, but as high as possible.

“If you have high levels of vaccination and your contact tracing is working really well, it’s easy to get rid of the cases,” Professor Saul said.

High levels of vaccination mean it’s “going to be much easier to get rid of the rare intrusion of COVID”, he said.

First, we need to get daily COVID case numbers back down to near zero, Professor Saul said.

To do that we need good compliance and vaccines in arms.

“Be patient. Comply. If you see your neighbours doing something stupid, have a kind word to them and get vaccinated,” he said.

“Otherwise, the nightmare scenario will come loose. We can look at Florida, the UK … there’s a number of examples to pick from.”

Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of South Australia, said the spread of the Delta variant was slowing down in Sydney.

“What I’m seeing at the moment is the rate of growth is slowing down,” Professor Esterman said.

The combination of Sydney’s restrictions and high vaccine rate, with more than 30 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated, had started to slow the virus down, he said.

“Although we’re seeing more each day, the speed is slowing. We’re getting a better reproduction number,” Professor Esterman explained.

“I think by the end of the year, we will be out of lockdowns. We’ll have a high proportion of the whole population vaccinated.”

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2021/08/28/nsw-contact-tracing-covid/

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