EVEN with almost five billion doses of vaccine administered, COVID-19 cases continue to rise on a global scale, as do deaths from the virus.
The increases have slowed this month, but so too have vaccination rates, which have plateaued at about 250 million doses a week.
In NSW, case numbers are below their peak but with 619 of yesterday's 755 cases classified as "unknown source", infection rates could easily take off again.
CORONAVIRUS CATCH-UP:
- Info from the COVID hotline
- NSW lockdown costs put at $16 billion
- Why 'Freedom Day' is a fiction
- Barilaro's Tuesday regional update
- National snapshot
In her daily 11am briefings, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been urging people to focus on vaccination rates rather than case numbers, saying a return to zero COVID is unlikely.
COVID may well be embedded in Sydney, but things look more promising here in the Hunter, with just one new case added yesterday, the sixth straight day in single figures.
Our worst day was almost a fortnight ago on August 12.
The Hunter has recorded two deaths, however, and as of yesterday, 32 people were in hospital with COVID, although none were in intensive care.
Our low case numbers - by global standards - have allowed the Australian health system to cope with coronavirus relatively easily, although the Sydney outbreak is building pressure, as Ms Berejiklian revealed yesterday about Westmead Hospital.
Overseas, any number of countries had their hospitals overloaded with coronavirus cases, both early on before treatment responses improved with experience, and more recently with Delta.
On these shores, the Australian Medical Association says our health system needs to prepare - and to be funded appropriately - to cope with the influx of cases the association says will be inevitable once our national political strategy moves from suppressing the virus to "living with it".
On the positive side, the sheer scale of this pandemic means COVID-19 has been studied, in real time, like no other disease, giving health services everywhere access to the latest thinking on the virus.
CORONAVIRUS GLOBALLY:
- Llama antibodies blunt virus, researchers say
- Germany looks to new COVID metric
- 5000 cases after UK music festival
- China says no new cases
- 10,000 Israeli cases a day
One such study, published today in the Australian journal Anaesthesia and with Newcastle medico Dr Peter Pockney as a co-author, is one of a series of related papers to find links between COVID and higher-than-usual rates of potentially fatal post-operative blood clots.
Research is making it increasingly clear that infection with COVID can carry long-term effects, even for those with mild symptoms.
Another argument in favour of suppression where possible, and another reason to get the jabs.
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