DESPITE the stuttering start to Australia's now galloping vaccine rollout, there is a growing sense of optimism that the nation's battle with COVID-19 may be coming to some sort of manageable conclusion, just in time for a can't-come-too-soon festive season.
Looking locally, we reported on Monday that the Hunter's double-dose vaccination rate had reached 89 per cent, and overtaken the statewide figure of 87.8 per cent.
Additionally, eight of nine Hunter local government areas had single-shot rates above the NSW average of 93.6 per cent.
Guided by constantly refined epidemiological modelling, the governments of the hardest hit jurisdictions - Victoria, NSW and the ACT - have been able to time the easing of their restrictions without driving up "freedom day" spikes in coronavirus cases that have often followed the relaxation of lockdowns overseas.
Instead, despite the staged return of various personal freedoms, case numbers have continued to fall, against the understandable expectations of those who feared that the political push to reopen the economy was too much, too soon.
Even with the vaccines doing their job, however, we need to remember that a return to crisis conditions may only be a new COVID variant away.
A new strain of Delta, known as AY.4.2, is being closely watched.
Worldwide, coronavirus has claimed more than 395,000 lives from 23.5 million infections in the past 28 days alone - proof the pandemic is far from over.
But in our part of the world, the outlook is increasingly optimistic, even if the Hunter remains, by definition, a COVID hotspot.
With numbers in Sydney dropping away dramatically, the Hunter New England health district's 64 cases accounted for more than a third of yesterday's state total of 173.
At the same time, only 18 people are in Hunter hospitals - four of them in intensive care - from some 790 active cases.
The Hunter outbreak has taken the lives of 13 people, but the fears of uncontrolled contagion that were genuine concerns at various times since the pandemic began are now receding memories, in our part of the world, at least.
So much so, that Melbourne Cup day 2021 may well go down as the day a vaxxed-up Australia threw off its masks to celebrate the end of the darkness and the sight of a sign welcoming them to the "new normal".
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