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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Australia has managed to effectively suppress Covid-19. After months of lockdown, Victoria’s second wave is under control and case numbers around the country have flatlined.

But with more international arrivals, experts predict that outbreaks will continue. So, how do we manage living with Covid-19?

Today, health journalist and contributor to The Saturday Paper, Amy Coopes, on the measures that will keep Australia safe from here on.

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Archival Tape -- News Reporter #1:

“Victoria has returned back to zero coronavirus cases for the first time…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #2:

“There were no new infections in Victoria for a second day in a row…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #3:

“To some breaking news now for the 6th day in a row, Victoria has recorded no new cases…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #4:

“Australia has recorded its first day with no community transmission of Covid-19 in almost 5 months yesterday…”

RUBY:

Amy, last week Australia recorded zero cases of community transmission for the first time in months. So how significant is that milestone?

AMY:

Well, look, I think obviously the significance of those of us, particularly down in Victoria who've been living under the lockdown, it cannot be overstated. But in international terms, this is actually, it’s hugely significant. It's not really been seen in many other places, and in fact on comparative terms, this is actually not being seen quite in the same way outside of the epicentre of Covid - Wuhan - just purely going from a surge of twenty thousand cases to effectively zero is something we really haven't seen.

So, many other countries have done well, as we've all heard, places like Taiwan’s done exceptionally well, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, but those countries, by contrast to Australia, did very well in quashing their first wave, it never really took off, and they've sort of seen smaller outbreaks along the course, but we've not seen we've not really seen in global terms anything quite like what we've seen in Melbourne in terms of a significant good going second wave that has come down so significantly and quite swiftly as well.

RUBY:

Ok, now that we are here, how precarious is our position, particularly when we’re looking to increase international arrivals, people who want to come home?

AMY:

Yeah, I think this is the million dollar question, it's certainly what's on all of our minds. I think the reality is there's no such thing as a post-Covid world. We are going to have to live with the virus.

We are only ever just a quarantine leak, essentially, away from an outbreak happening again. And that's not just a security guard passing on the virus back out into the community. It's also the virus escaping through people who've done their for 14 days and then become infectious. You know, some people have longer latency periods. The 14 days covers most people, but it doesn't cover everyone. So, you know, knowing these facts, I suppose, we need to accept that the virus is going to be able to be imported back into Australia. That's without question. I guess the thing that we really need to be concerned about is how ready we are for that.

RUBY:

OK, so you're saying that at the moment we are looking pretty good, but if we don't make sure that our systems are functioning well, there is the potential that we could face another wave of the pandemic.

AMY:

Yeah, I think that's right.

The pandemic globally is accelerating, there's no question - the pandemic is hitting its stride, it's not slowing down.

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #1:

“Germany has posted a massive spike in Covid-19 cases with more than six and a half thousand…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #2:

“Italy is bracing itself for another possible lockdown…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #3:

“Spain is now the first western European country to exceed one million reported Covid-19 infections…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #4:

“France is under pressure, the country passed the grim milestone of one million Coronavirus cases, and hit a new record in daily infections…”

AMY:

The pain of seeing the untrammelled outbreak as a health care person, seeing hospitals being overrun in the UK now...

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #5:

“England is to face a new lockdown…”

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Man #1:

“Stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives.”

AMY:

...and in the US capacity running out…

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #6:

“The US steamrolling through all-time highs, on Saturday notching 79,059 cases…”

Archival Tape -- News Reporter #7:

“The situation is so serious, air conditioned tents are being set up to try and cope with the influx of patients as hospitals in hotspot areas become overwhelmed.”

AMY:

...it gives you chills. And this is what is at stake.

RUBY:

What do we need then to do to make sure outbreaks, like the ones we’re seeing in the US and in Europe, don’t happen here?

AMY:

We needed to get the contract tracing, the public health sort of system up to scratch and to be able to kind of meet the demand, and then we can only do that by bringing down the numbers to a manageable level, and once we did that, then we could kind of track down every single cluster that happens.

At the sort of very worst kind of time of the outbreak, where there were lots and lots of numbers, the contact tracing teams were following like 76 people each. And when you think about the kind of chains of people that stretch out beyond those 76 people, like we're talking about huge numbers of people in a really big burden on the system.

Now we have got two thousand contact tracers kind of on the books in Victoria ready to go.

And the opinion is that it's been tested to a degree by the Shepparton, Kilmore and Northern Metro clusters, and it's seemed to be holding up well and much better than it was. What we don't know, I guess, is that we don't know how it's going to perform when people are no longer in lockdown.

So what lockdown does is obviously artificially curtail the number of contacts people have, so when you go back to kind of normal or a semblance of normal where you're leaving the house and you're you know, you have many more casual contacts than you do when you're in your house for many hours of the day.

So it's going to certainly require more of the contact tracing teams. But the hope and the belief is that the infrastructure is now there in place to just be able to roll into action so much more quickly and so much more efficiently. And I guess time will tell.

RUBY:

So, Amy, given all of this and when we look at the picture beyond Victoria, when we look at it, Australia wide, what do we know with contact tracing is now up to the task?

AMY:

Look, I think it's fairly widely considered that the systems are now in place, and they have been tested to a degree in many places, not just in Victoria, but we're seeing ongoing sort of like small flares in New South Wales. And certainly, New South Wales has had a very long tail of infections, but it's managed to keep on top of them, and it's very much thought that it's contact tracing system was kind of already there to the level that Victoria needed to get to.

And so I guess the question is, is the system ready now for if and when we get these little sparks come out of return and travellers, essentially, which is where they're going to come from.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Amy, as we enter into summer, hopefully with robust contact tracing systems, which other measures will also be important. Is there any evidence about how effective things like masks and curfews and social distancing will be?

AMY:

There's been research into some of these measures. So, mask wearing in the Melbourne outbreak reduced case numbers, estimated to have reduced case numbers by around 20 percent, so that's certainly going to be, ongoing, an important thing for us to be doing in the community, particularly if and when community transmission takes off again.

The other things that have been studied; so physical distancing does have a role, I'm not sure of the quantum, but it does have a role in reducing case numbers. But the adherence to that is really important. So you have to have 80 percent or greater adherence to have an effect. And if you get it down to just 70, which is not much, the virus can just continue to transmit.

And the third thing is some states are having widespread use of QR codes: New South Wales, ACT is kind of uniformly doing it; New South Wales it's fairly widespread, it's apparently not so widespread in Victoria.

So South Korea pioneered these during early in their outbreak and they've done very well in terms of Covid, and they found that QR codes actually shave off about four to six hours of contact tracing time, which is actually huge when you're talking about having to turn around all of someone's contacts in 72 hours, it's actually like a really big kind of fillip. So we want to bring that in if at all possible as widespread as we can, because it's going to make a real difference.

RUBY:

And Amy, this knowledge about which public health measures work the best and how effective things like wearing masks and social distancing is, is helpful while we gather more information about Covid-19 and the best way to combat it, and also while we wait to see what happens with the vaccine, because obviously that's something that will completely change the landscape. So do we know more about when that's likely to happen?

AMY:

Yeah, look, I guess the consensus of people that I spoke to is that the earliest that is likely to see this would be mid next year. We are about to hopefully at the end of this year hear the kind of findings of the big phase three trials of the kind of leading candidate vaccines. If that's kind of looking good, then this is going to be a mammoth logistic exercise. This is one of the issues that it's not only finding a vaccine that works, but it's then being able to scale up at a global scale at speed in a way that we've never had to do before. We're talking about production, we're talking about transport, we're talking about storage.

The other thing about the vaccines I think it's important to address is that vaccines work in different ways, and the current generation of vaccines does not block infections. So it reduces disease and stops you from getting sick, which is great, and it's going to reduce the burden on our health system. But it's not going to stop Covid from spreading because we need a vaccine that can block infection from doing that, and that's not in the current kind of crop of ones that are being tested.

RUBY:

So you’re saying regardless, these measures, things like social distancing, will be around for a while, they are part of our new ‘covid normal’...

AMY:

I think life is going to go back to a semblance of normal and that is not that far off. We are going to be able to go back to many of the things that we used to do, but just with caveats. You know, we're going to be wearing masks still, we're going to be still observing hand hygiene, we're going to be checking into places, y’know, everywhere you go.

The one thing that's not going to go back to any kind of normal is international travel. We're going to remain isolated from the world to a degree for quite a long time. Certainly, we've obviously started a travel bubble with New Zealand that's currently one way, but that will be the first thing, I guess, to be relaxed, and there’s other countries that are going to be good prospects for us now that we have got community transmission under control in Australia, how can we start normalising relations with other countries. There's going to be essentially like a risk stratified system whereby high risk countries, you're still going to have to do full hotel quarantine when you come back, but then there may be intermediate risk countries where you may be able to travel to somewhere like Singapore and then just quarantine at home, which I think would be really welcome for lots of people, obviously, and then there may be low risk countries such as New Zealand or somewhere like Taiwan, where you don't have to quarantine, you may be able to travel freely between the two countries.

Obviously, that's contingent on ongoing kind of transmission staying lower in those countries or undetectable in those countries and then the same for here. But yes, the good old days of contemplating an international holiday, I think, are some time off yet, in terms of a Covid normal life

RUBY:

Amy, thank you so much for talking to me about this.

AMY:

No worries.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Joe Biden has officially claimed victory in the US Presidential race. The President elect and his running mate, Kamala Harris, both delivered victory speeches yesterday, where they promised to reunite and heal the nation.

Donald Trump was playing a round of golf when the latest votes, confirming Biden’s victory, were announced.

And Melbourne has been reunited with regional Victoria today, as the ring of steel separating the city from the country has been removed.

The latest easing of restrictions means that all of Victoria now has the same rules in place. There is no longer a restriction on movement. Restaurants and cafes are now able to have up to 40 people indoors.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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