EVEN if there's a chance this rapidly rising NSW outbreak will diminish as quickly as the first surge of COVID did in March last year, global experience says we should steel ourselves for a sustained period of nationally unprecedented levels of infection, illness and death.
Lockdowns have expanded to cover some 16 million people in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
Despite its determined policies of hard-border isolation, Western Australia may not be far behind, after virus fragments were detected at Broome, the holiday stop north of the Pilbara iron ore mines and just off the main road to Darwin.
COVID CONCERNS HERE:
- Charlestown Square added to exposure site list
- Close the loopholes letting people into the Hunter
- Two more Hunter cases, but no more vaccines
- Police praise 'good start' to Hunter lockdown
- Hunter test sites swamped with demand
At his 5pm press conference after yesterday's National Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was insistent that Australia's troubled vaccination rollout program had "turned a corner" and was now operating at a speed comparable to some of the early movers.
His COVID taskforce commander, Lieutenant General John Frewen, said 13.3 million doses had been administered all up, including 1.3 million in the past week, at up to 240,000 doses a day.
The press conference heard that some 14 per cent of the 4600-plus people infected this time around needed hospitalisation.
Noting "worrying signs" about large numbers of "unlinked" cases in NSW, Commonwealth chief medical officer Paul Kelly insisted this was now "a pandemic of the unvaccinated".
That's a potentially misleading statement, when only one in five Australians have had both shots.
As all involved in the National Cabinet process must know, whether it's vaccines or COVID tests, the problem is supply rather than demand.
Some delays are understandable, but if governments are going to keep a lid on rapid home-test kits - as Mr Morrison said would be the case for the time being - they need to make it quicker and easier for people to be tested.
And to be vaccinated.
COVID ABROAD:
- Japan's case total passes 1 million
- Delta still rising in China
- France's highest court upholds legality of 'vaccine pass' for bars, eateries
- South Korea pushes social distancing with 15 per cent fully vaccinated
- Hanoi extends restrictions as Delta hits Vietnam
Pfizer shots were diverted from the Belmont vaccination hub and other regional suppliers to Sydney HSC students simply because Canberra failed to order enough vaccines, quickly enough, in the first place.
And so we learn again to cope with life in lockdown.
We have been here before, and are familiar with what's needed.
But as other nations before us have learned, the Delta variant finds lockdown weaknesses very quickly.
Please be careful.
We are in uncharted waters with Delta, and this is not a drill.
ISSUE: 39,637
