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Health Minister Greg Hunt.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

We know most people who develop severe disease often don’t develop those symptoms until the second week of infection,but so far hospitals are not being overwhelmed and,if symptoms are resolving quickly,it does raise hope that this variant may cause a more benign infection than Delta.

We also can’t yet tell if this is a transmission threat of the same proportion in settings outside southern Africa. Most cases to date have been reported in South Africa which has low vaccination coverage with only 25 per cent of the population fully vaccinated,and rates are even lower in neighbouring countries. There are also higher numbers of immunocompromised people living with HIV/AIDS.

The virus has already spread beyond the southern African countries with cases among arrivals from the region now reported in Sydney,as well as in Belgium,Hong Kong and Italy. Omicron is also suspected to be the variant responsible for at least some of the 61 positive detections among arrivals on two recent flights from Johannesburg to the Netherlands.

Two cases have also been reported in Britain,one in Essex and another in Nottingham,both linked to travel to southern Africa. At this stage,we have no reports of local transmission outside southern Africa,but it may only be a matter of time as some countries have not had border testing requirements in place for international arrivals in recent times,only reinstating these now.

One of the signals that a new variant may be of concern is if testing methods do not perform as well. The good news is that PCR testing still works for Omicron and,in fact,it seems certain PCR tests can even screen for this variant. This has been used in South Africa to estimate that 90 per cent of COVID-19 cases are caused by this variant even though only small portion has been genetically confirmed so far.

If countries around the world can also use the PCR test to identify possible incursions of this variant at the time of the first test result,it will help enormously to track and control this variant. It also enables detection in regions where genomic testing is less accessible or will take a long time,including resource-poor countries.

Australia is looking into whether we can tweak our PCR testing to enable this early warning here also as we continue to screen all international arrivals. Those travellers who have been in nine southern African countries in the last 14 days are now prevented from entering Australia for two weeks,including those with student or worker visas,and returning citizens or permanent residents will be placed in supervised quarantine.

Now that Omicron is not fully contained to southern Africa,it is sensible to dial up our border controls in Australia as a precaution and to buy the time needed to learn more about this variant,especially in relation to vaccine effectiveness.

Victoria and NSW continue to require arrivals who are not fully vaccinated to enter supervised quarantine and are now also requiring all vaccinated returnees to isolate for 72 hours in addition to the usual testing requirements on day one,and then again after five to seven days. This gives authorities time to assess whether anyone arriving is possibly carrying Omicron,and whether they might have been infectious on the flight,which would trigger more active follow-up and quarantining of those who may have been exposed on the same flight.

This is a balanced approach,not only causing the least disruption to those arrivals at very low risk,but also not pushing lots of people into hotel quarantine which might overload the system and actually put us at greater risk of transmission within the hotel setting that could leak into the community. This is precisely the time we need purpose-built quarantine facilities to shore up our international border controls for arrivals carrying a variant of concern,or at high risk of doing so.

This is our first run at dialling up our responses since starting on the road to living with the virus in Australia,and something we need to get used to.

Positive cases in Australia might result in internal controls being dialled up as well,like mask-wearing in indoor settings,as a precaution until the situation is assessed. This how we keep control over this virus,and its many variants.

But on the upside,if this or future strains do out-compete Delta,or whatever the dominant variant of the time is,but cause less severe disease,then we might be taking a significant step along our path to endemicity.

Catherine Bennett is chair of epidemiology at Deakin University.

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