Australia's national plan to relax Covid restrictions risks a catastrophic death toll, new modelling shows, as the Prime Minister and NSW Premier continue to talk up easing restrictions before the community is protected.
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Researchers from three of Australia's most prestigious universities warned tens of thousands of lives could be saved by revising the national plan to vaccinate children and reaching 90 per cent vaccination coverage among adults before "exposing Australians to uncontrolled COVID-19".
Their modelling shows Australia would see between 25,000 and 43,000 Covid deaths and more than 270,000 people with debilitating long Covid if governments and health officials follow the national plan.
That plan has Covid restrictions relaxed at a vaccination rate of 70 per cent of people aged 16 and over and almost no restrictions at 80 per cent.
In contrast, the original Doherty Institute modelling used to revise the current national plan, estimated between 1300 and 2300 deaths over 180 days from a seeding event of the virus. It did not estimate outcomes if the test-trace-isolate-quarantine strategy failed to clamp down an outbreak.
One author of the new modelling, Professor Quentin Grafton from Australian National University, said statements from Scott Morrison and Gladys Berejiklian in favour of easing restrictions at a flat rate of 70 per cent of adults was like handcuffing the nation's public health response while overtaxing its health workforce.
"We need much higher vaccination rates before we could contemplate handcuffing ourselves in relation to public health measures," Professor Grafton said.
"Although it's an epidemic in NSW now [with more than 800 new cases each day], it's a tiny fraction of what it could be if we open up and don't have proper public health measures and inadequate vaccination coverage."
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Even if Australia did achieve a 90 per cent vaccination rate with children, the new model found fully relaxing public health measures to eliminate community transmission would eventually still result in around 5000 deaths and 40,000 cases of long Covid.
The government should have decided what level of fatalities it would tolerate and work backwards to determine the vaccination rate needed to achieve that, but that was not how the national plan was developed, Professor Grafton said.
"It's a no-brainer - a simple calculation to make, and it doesn't therefore make sense from the Prime Minister's statement [on Monday] that at 70 per cent that we should stop having lockdowns because the cost is not worth it," Professor Grafton said.
"That's not what our modelling finds."
Children could also benefit from vaccination, he said. If Australia could achieve 75 per cent vaccination coverage among children and adolescents it could prevent a further 12,000 hospitalisations.
Dr Zoë Hyde, lead author of the new modelling, said premature relaxing of the restrictions would likely be irreversible, the resulting deaths unacceptable.
"It's simply too dangerous to treat COVID-19 like the flu," Dr Hyde said.
"We also can't forget about our children, who can get very sick from this virus and need protection before we open up."
As questions swirl around how relevant the Doherty Institute's modelling that underpins the national plan still is, the infection and immunity research centre released its own statement.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, it said, once Australia achieves 70-80 per cent vaccination, resulting in less transmissions and fewer hospitalisation and deaths.
"This level of vaccination will make it easier to live with the virus, as we do with other viruses such as the flu. However, it won't be possible to maintain a situation where there are no cases at all."
Any death is a tragedy, it noted, but the Australian health system can cope with the roughly 600 flu deaths every year.
With 70 per cent vaccine coverage of the adult population and partial public health measures, the institute predicted 1457 deaths over six months, or just 13 deaths with "optimal public health measures (and no lockdowns)".
"We've learned from watching countries that have removed all restrictions that there is no 'freedom day'."
Generalised lockdowns are unlikely to be needed, it said, if public health measures of test, trace, isolate and quarantine - known as TTIQ - can prevent outbreaks from growing with a reproduction rate below one.
With higher case loads however, it predicts vigilant public health interventions will be needed.
"It might seem that these 'test, trace, isolate and quarantine' measures aren't currently working - in New South Wales or Victoria. But they are. They are stopping transmissions and reducing the effective reproduction rate from 5 to closer to 1.3 in New South Wales."
The institute said it's modellers were working through implementation issues specific to the states and territories, specific populations and high risk settings.
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Australia is expected to have enough mRNA Covid vaccine doses to achieve almost total population coverage early in 2022.
The warning comes as Scott Morrison hit out at two premiers, Queensland's Annastacia Palaszczuk and WA's Mark McGowan, for indicating they will defy the Commonwealth's plan.
However, Ms Berejkilian urged people in NSW to focus on the vaccination rate rather than the number of Covid cases, which remain above 800 each day.
"Once we hit 70 per cent double dose, we will be able to live life more freely and once we hit 80 per cent double dose, essentially we would have normalised the way we treat Covid," she said.
Victorian Premier Dan Andrews also backed the current national plan targets on Monday, admitting they had risk, but were preferable to the impact of state-wide lockdowns.
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