Well,based on Sunday’s test-positivity rate of 20 per cent,we conservatively estimate the true number of new daily infections to be well over 50,000. It’s unlikely one in five people in the population has COVID-19;if we did more testing,the test-positivity rate would fall,but we would also find more cases. If you found solace in the drop in new cases reported in NSW on Sunday – down to 18,278 from the 22,577 on Saturday – think again. Sunday’s numbers were detected from 90,019 tests,Saturday from 119,278. If we’d tested as many,we’d likely have recorded more than 24,000 cases on Sunday.
Policymakers point to current hospitalisations as low and say “everything is going to plan”. But this ignores the fact hospitalisations lag cases by one to two weeks. Since just Friday,the number of COVID cases in hospital has risen by 28 per cent and in intensive by 20 per cent. Two weeks ago,recorded cases were 10 times lower than they are now. How sure are we that ICUs won’t be overwhelmed later this month? Are we planning for that contingency?
Through December,the hospitalisation rate was 2 per cent for Omicron cases,with the ICU rate 10 per cent of that. That means the likely 150,000 or so true cases for Friday,Saturday and Sunday would translate into 3000 admitted to hospital and 300 to ICU in a couple of weeks’ time. That’s 20 per cent of ICU capacity in a three-day period.
Themedical establishment points to low Omicron hospitalisation rates in other countries such as Britain and South Africa to suggest rates will remain low. But those countries had very high rates of pre-Omicron infections (50 per cent and 70 per cent of their populations,respectively),which has been shown to be even more effective than vaccines in preventing severe disease.
Evidence fromQatar suggests prior infection reduces the risk of severe disease by 99 per cent,while the Pfizer vaccine reduces it by 91 per cent. And evidence fromSouth Africa suggests prior infection reduces the risk of a subsequent Omicron infection by 75 per cent,while evidence fromBritain shows a booster reduces it by only 50 per cent. So populations with higher rates of prior infection naturally will have lower case and hospitalisation rates.
In Australia,we’ve been fortunate to avoid the huge death tolls those countries paid for the protection that came from prior infection– and we shouldn’t want it any other way. What it does mean is our policymakers are counting on an unlikely best-case scenario. But good public policy should always involve hoping for the best but planning for the worst. Alas,this lack of contingency planning is part of a pattern of behaviour.
We’ve done many things well during the pandemic. We closed our international border in March 2020 and quickly established contact tracing and testing regimes. We eventually achieved some of the highest vaccination rates in the world. And we used aggressive fiscal policy to cushion the economic fallout.