Conjecture about the length of the Sydney lockdown is mounting, with one authority on special events saying events in Sydney may not recommence until after Christmas, while medical opinion feels that the lockdown may run a long way into September and perhaps well beyond.
Troops will join police in southwest Sydney from Monday to help enforce lockdown orders, which are not always being followed. Sydney’s lockdown – which applies to some suburbs more than others – has been described as a “patchwork lockdown”, or “lockdown lite”. Officially it has about four more weeks to run, till 28 August. But it may well go beyond that.
Covid infection continues to spread relentlessly in NSW, with 239 new locally acquired cases reported yesterday (Thursday 29 July), of which at least 66 were “infectious while in the community”. There are currently 182 Covid-19 cases in hospital in NSW, with 54 people in intensive care, 22 of whom are on ventilators.
From today, NSW Police have the power to close businesses that flout public health orders, as restrictions are tightened in eight local government areas in Sydney. The Australian Defence Force will soon join police in helping enforce the law.
Professor Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist from the University of South Australia, estimates that Sydney’s lockdown is likely to go well into September.
There are two reasons, he told the ABC:
- The first is the NSW government’s vaccination target: it wants to see 10 million doses administered, or 80% of the adult population inoculated, before life can return to a pre-Covid state;
- The second is the number of people who have been infectious in the community, which has grown steadily throughout the course of the current outbreak.
“Unfortunately, no matter what target NSW sets, the lockdown is likely to go well into September,” Professor Esterman said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has avoided putting any date on a likely end to the Sydney lockdown, even when given the opportunity to do so.
Here he is speaking to Karl Stefanovic on yesterday’s Today Show, discussing payments during lockdown:
Stefanovic: How long will the payments go for?
Prime Minister: As long as the lockdown goes.
Stefanovic: So if this lockdown in Sydney goes until Christmas, you’ll keep the payments coming?
Prime Minister: Those payments will keep coming.
The Sydney Covid tally is still trending upwards, so obviously has not yet peaked. When it does peak, some epidemiologists say it will take at least the same time again, or longer, to tail off.
Trevor Connell, publisher of Australian Special Events, has blogged his opinion that events in Sydney may not recommence until after Christmas. He says recent developments reinforce that view.
Connell cited Wednesday’s statement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison that lockdowns would end once the vaccine rollout is complete, and that he (Morrison) believed the rollout would be complete, essentially, by the end of the year.
Connell wrote: “As we know, until lockdowns become a thing of the past, the event industry cannot plan ahead and certainly not without government-guaranteed cancellation insurance.”
Connell noted NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s refusal to extend the tighter restrictions to all of Greater Sydney, a course recommended by epidemiologists.
He quoted the following extract from yesterday’s ABC Coronacast episode, featuring the ABC’s Tegan Taylor and the broadcaster’s renowned journalist (and medical doctor) Norman Swan. (The emphasis in the transcript is Connell’s).
Tegan Taylor: … yesterday we found out that greater Sydney is going to be in extended lockdown for another four weeks and with particularly tough restrictions in eight local government areas. So, four weeks… I mean, hopefully it’s enough, but the way it’s tracking, I don’t know if it feels like it’s going to be enough.
Norman Swan: I’ve been talking to a few epidemiologists, and I can’t find any who believe that the measures in New South Wales are enough to bend the curve. What they are doing is chasing their tail, so they’ve seen spread into another three local government areas, Parramatta, Georges River, Campbelltown and that’s where they have extended particularly the restriction on workers too, but that’s after the event rather than being ahead of it. And really the belief amongst the epidemiologists I’m talking to is that it should be citywide, it should be the whole of greater Sydney with the same level of lockdown.
It’s just a confusing set of different rules rather than one rule for the whole city, which is what you get in other states where they say there is only X number of reasons for going out, this is the way it is, sorry it’s got to be all of you but that’s the way it’s got to be.
So all in all, the epidemiologists I speak to say we are not going to be that much different at the end of four weeks.
Tegan Taylor: Right, so we’ve got all of these things happening. Are you saying that if they just had a tougher lockdown citywide that that would be the final thing that might get it under control in four weeks?
Norman Swan: We’ve been saying on Coronacast for a long time now is that the only thing that works when your contact tracing is failing, is social distancing, that is the only thing that works. If we were socially distancing enough, we would actually have seen the curve bending down because we’ve got really good contact tracing, but contact tracing is almost certainly being overwhelmed at the moment, and the numbers just either stay the same or keep on going up on a steady basis.
So we are on a precipice, which contact tracing might keep us from, and we might be in exactly the same position in a month’s time, in which case what the Premier says is absolutely right, if we hadn’t had contact tracing and lockdown to the extent we have, we would have had a major outbreak, major pandemic with thousands of cases, that’s true. But we have to be part of Australia, we have to lift the borders sometime, we have to get back to work, and we are not going to get back to work if we’ve still got 100 or 200 cases a day and 40, 50 people being out in the community spreading. And that’s going to be no different for the pain of the lockdown.
Tegan Taylor: There’s got to be a border somewhere though.
Norman Swan: Well, does there? There might need to be a border around greater Sydney, and greater Sydney does end, you do go into national park and green areas, and you are going into the Blue Mountains, you are going down to Wollongong. So there are borders. And the outer borders are much lower risk than the inner borders. So when you get down to Wollongong you are petering out a bit down that way. But you’ve just got to lock down the whole city, according to the epidemiologists we’re speaking to.
One hotel breach in Queensland caused the lockdown of the Northern Territory. There is significance there. One infection to a medical registrar, a PA, many weeks ago, caused the shutdown of the Byron Bay Blues Festival; it had an impact on northern New South Wales. This virus just finds the tiniest crack in the system and spreads through it, through the air.
Listen to the relevant Coronacast podcast or read the full transcript on the ABC site here.
Written by Peter Needham
