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Researchers suggest that relaxing Covid-19 restrictions before reaching zero community transmission will endanger life and economic hazards, which means that New South Wales may need to extend the lockdown period.
A team of economists, public health experts, and modelers at the Australian National University found that the benefits of a lockdown that is long enough to zero community transmission outweighed the short-term benefits of prematurely relaxing the lockdown.
Lead author Quentin Grafton (Quentin Grafton) said in a statement on Monday: “Our main insight is that the lockdown takes long enough to eliminate the virus, and an effective and longer lockdown is beneficial to public health and economic.”
Professor Grafton’s comments are similar to those frequently repeated by Western Australia Governor Mark McGowan. He once stated that the goal should always be to “smash and kill” the virus.
However, Mr. McGowan’s position has been severely criticized by commentators on the East Coast, including the hard borders of Western Australia.
Professor Grafton said that with the initial two-week blockade in the Greater Sydney area coming to an end, the New South Wales government is now under pressure to relax restrictions.
He said: “But the decision must be based on facts on the ground, such as the number of new cases, links to known chains of transmission, and the number of new cases that have not yet been self-isolated.”
When NCA NewsWire pressed further, Professor Grafton elaborated on his position.
He said: “The key is to (block) early and work hard and last long enough to achieve zero Covid-19 community transmission.
“The current figures for Greater Sydney do not look good.
“This is a concern-there is no doubt about it.”
Professor Grafton said the decision to end the lockdown must be based on the number of infectious cases in the community.
“If we have uncertainty about this… then we will have problems in Greater Sydney,” he said.
New South Wales recorded 35 new local infections overnight, 5 of which were related to commercial flights from the Gold Coast.
Among the new cases, 24 were in isolation during the entire infectious period, 4 were in isolation during part of the infectious period, and 7 were in the community.
Professor Grafton did not call for an extension of the lockdown, but said that a decision should be made based on data available on Friday.
He said: “We have to make sure that we can do this and not catch an epidemic.”
He added that the virus will not only stay in Sydney, which means that the entire country may be at risk and will cost hundreds of billions of Australian dollars.
Tom Kompas of the University of Melbourne said the authorities should rethink how to manage the Covid-19 outbreak.
“We are still a long way from the post-Covid world. If we think we can lift movement restrictions in an uncontrolled outbreak, we need to think twice,” Professor Kompass said in a statement.
“The key point here is not to consider the economic costs in a few weeks, although they are large, but to consider the costs in a few months if the community spread continues.”
Professor Grafton told NCA NewsWire that more financial assistance should be provided to people who are struggling during the blockade, including businesses.
“We need to provide companies with better financial compensation,” he said.
He compared the United Kingdom with Australia because the United Kingdom had nearly 130,000 deaths and its GDP fell by 10%-the largest decline since the 18th century.
Professor Grafton said that due to concerns about the Delta variant and Australia’s low vaccination level, it is more important to manage the pandemic safely from a public health and economic perspective.
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