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If they hadn\u2019t already become clear during the week, Friday\u2019s shock-and-awe \u201cnational emergency\u201d press conference crystallised several aspects of the COVID-19 crisis in NSW.<\/p>\n
First, the lockdown is not working. It may have prevented exponential growth in cases, but the numbers are still going in the wrong direction and at best it\u2019s keeping a lid on the outbreak. The sacrifices Sydneysiders are making are not yielding the anticipated outcome.<\/p>\n
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Bleak: NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant on Friday.<\/span>Credit:<\/span>Nick Moir<\/cite><\/p>\n Second, the virus is circulating among essential workers and in vital retail settings. While some transmission is still occurring as a result of illegal household mixing, Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant highlighted spread in essential workplaces as a key problem.<\/p>\n \u201cThese workplaces are not the hairdressers or the discretionary premises, they are premises that actually put food on the table for people in Sydney,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Third, NSW effectively conceded that getting back to zero-COVID may no be longer feasible. The shift was not explicit, and cases may yet peak and decline. But it would likely take so long that we would be in a different, much more vaccinated environment by the time we got back to zero.<\/p>\n So where does that leave us? It means the state\u2019s fate is tied much more explicitly to vaccination. Hence Premier Gladys Berejiklian\u2019s short-lived plea to redirect the nation\u2019s Pfizer doses to south-west Sydney, immediately rebuffed by national cabinet on Friday.<\/p>\n A reminder that NSW had done the heavy lifting of receiving returned travellers over the past 18 months did nothing to win over her counterparts. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said bluntly: \u201cIt\u2019s not my job to get the pubs open in NSW.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, NSW will now push out the gap between Pfizer doses to six weeks in order to free up its limited vaccine stock for more first doses. But inside NSW Health there is concern this won\u2019t be enough and that without extra supply the state won\u2019t escape lockdown until late in the year.<\/p>\n What the next few months looks like in NSW is now being discussed at the highest levels of government. Berejiklian vowed to unveil a roadmap this week to give families, students and businesses some certainty, despite the huge number of unknowns.<\/p>\n A couple of things appear likely: zero cases is shaping as a bonus rather than an explicit goal, and NSW will be cut off from the rest of the country for some time. That brings its own opportunities. Within NSW, there may be room to grant more freedoms to people who have had the jab.<\/p>\n On Friday Berejiklian spoke of a \u201ccontainment strategy\u201d that tries to ring-fence the worst-affected local government areas, vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as we can, and ease some restrictions where practicable without risking an explosion of cases.<\/p>\n Professor Greg Dore of the University of NSW\u2019s Kirby Institute acknowledged Friday as a turning point in his home state.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goal still can be to pursue zero community transmission but there needs to be a realisation that it may not be feasible with a highly infectious variant and broad community spread,\u201d he says. \u201cThe big question is: what is plan B?\u201d<\/p>\n Dore thinks plan B should look something like this: a mass Pfizer vaccination drive in south-west Sydney to provide fast, widespread first-dose protection, followed by a stratification of freedoms for vaccinated people, such as exemptions from isolation requirements, being allowed to see other vaccinated family members and being able to travel within NSW.<\/p>\n \u201cThat benefits the whole of society in a way, because that incentivises vaccination,\u201d he says. \u201cIt gets some movement happening, and it provides some hope for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Other experts have advocated similarly; former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth and the Australian National University\u2019s Sanjaya Senanayake told The Weekend Australian<\/em> the way to reopen was not all at once but to start giving fully vaccinated people more freedoms.<\/p>\n Dore also says vaccinated NSW citizens should be able to travel internationally and quarantine at home, with NSW effectively becoming the pilot program for home quarantine instead of the trials proposed elsewhere. He is less sure about opening up pubs and restaurants to vaccinated people because \u201cyou have to be very careful not to set up an us-against-them framework\u201d.<\/p>\n Sydney is enduring its harshest lockdown yet and could continue until November. <\/span>Credit:<\/span>Wolter Peeters <\/cite><\/p>\n Recall, however, that back in January Berejiklian was open to the idea of vaccine passports for high-risk venues. \u201cI don\u2019t ever like to force anybody to do anything, but there should be incentives in place for people to do certain things,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n Berejiklian signalled on Friday she wants a more \u201ctargeted and localised\u201d approach to restrictions. In expanding the toughest lockdown measures to the Cumberland and Blacktown local government areas, she talked of \u201ccontaining the virus and not allowing it to spread further\u201d.<\/p>\n Within those LGAs she also wants to \u201cthink innovatively and outside the box as to how we can get direct support to people on the ground\u201d. And \u201cwhere there are opportunities for us to open up, to ease restrictions, to let the economy undertake necessary work, we will do that\u201d, Berejiklian said.<\/p>\n The government has already come under pressure from its own MPs to loosen restrictions in less-affected areas and the distribution of the virus is plainly uneven. By Friday the number of active cases in the City of Sydney LGA had fallen to 31, in the inner west it had decreased to just 10, the northern beaches was at nine and many LGAs including North Sydney, Hornsby, Ryde, Lane Cove, Mosman and Hunters Hill were sitting below five active cases. Some of those were still at zero.<\/p>\n Would it be politically palatable to ease restrictions in the east, and outside metropolitan Sydney, while the city\u2019s most culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged areas stay locked down?<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d says Labor MP Hugh McDermott, whose seat of Prospect takes in the affected areas. \u201cPeople out here think they\u2019re being treated as second class citizens now, and they\u2019ve been treated like criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n Professor Joel Negin, head of the University of Sydney\u2019s School of Public Health, noted Berejiklian adjusted her language on Friday. \u201cUsing the term \u2018containment\u2019 is a gentle shift of gears, perhaps presaging what may come down the line,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Negin says NSW needed to have a conversation about alternatives to zero-COVID and what that would look like. But he also stressed Sydney had not been in lockdown for that long, relatively speaking, and could still move to harsher restrictions if there was appetite.<\/p>\n Berejiklian insisted on Friday she would not entertain measures that weren\u2019t proven to make a difference, such as a curfew or a five kilometre exercise radius, saying they would not \u201cchange the dial\u201d on caseload. \u201cI am not the type of premier that is going to be asking citizens to do things we don\u2019t think are going to have any effect.\u201d<\/p>\n Even among the stoic, a palpable sense of despair and resignation has set in. University of NSW economics professor Richard Holden co-authored an optimistic piece in the Australian Financial Review<\/em> last weekend in which he said vaccination would eventually make lockdowns a thing of the past, but not yet. \u201cWe just need to stick it out a little longer, lest all our sacrifices over the past year turn out to have been in vain,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n People shop for groceries in Campsie, within the Canterbury Bankstown LGA, where the virus is circulating.<\/span>Credit:<\/span>Janie Barrett<\/cite><\/p>\n One bruising week later, Holden is still sunny about the end game. But he admits \u201cthe interim might not be very good\u201d. If the lockdown can\u2019t reduce the caseload to zero or close to zero, there are only two options, he says – neither of them good.<\/p>\n \u201cOne is we keep going with some version of these restrictions like they are now … until we get enough people vaccinated. That could be November. It could easily be that long.\u201d If that transpired, it would eclipse the duration of Melbourne\u2019s brutal 112-day lockdown of 2020.<\/p>\n The alternative is to give up, reopen and let the virus run rampant. \u201cThat\u2019s a disaster for NSW and it\u2019s a disaster for Australia,\u201d Holden says. \u201cI think the \u2018let it rip strategy\u2019 is not really on table. But if this is going on for a considerable period of time then trying to relax restrictions in the safest, most sensible way is the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Holden suggested a vaccination blitz for teachers in order to reopen schools and a COVID-safe plan for the construction industry. The latter appears to be locked in and Chant said discussions were taking place this weekend about what \u201cleeway\u201d there may be in relation to schools.<\/p>\n Quiet roads in Belmore as COVID-19 cases spill into the area.<\/span>Credit:<\/span>Brook Mitchell<\/cite><\/p>\n The longer lockdown now on the cards will have massive economic consequences, but Holden said the financial support required to suppress the virus until NSW reaches mass vaccination is feasible, given our relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio and very low interest rates.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a relatively short period of time from a fiscal support perspective and it might only be required for NSW if we can keep things under control elsewhere. It would definitely be doable economically. Politically is a whole other question.\u201d<\/p>\n A lockdown of this length will take a diabolical toll on Sydney. And while voters have shown a clear preference for putting public health above all else, the dynamic is shifting as the rest of the world opens up and Australia remains months behind.<\/p>\n Pollster Peter Lewis says the electoral consequences for Berejiklian aren\u2019t necessarily immediate because the next election isn\u2019t due until March 2023. But the polls show patience is wearing thin.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year the politics of lockdown was that it was keeping people safe and leaders seemed to get a bit of a leave pass even if things didn\u2019t quite go as planned,\u201d Lewis says.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year this round of lockdowns is being seen to be driven by policy failure at a federal level by the rollout of vaccines, and we\u2019ve seen a drop off in support for the federal government and to a lesser extent state governments in areas where there have been lockdowns.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cgame-changing\u201d Delta strain has changed the game in NSW, and this week we will find out exactly how much.<\/p>\n Stay across the most crucial developments related to the pandemic with the Coronavirus Update. <\/i><\/b>Sign up to receive the weekly newsletter<\/i><\/b>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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