Australia was tantalisingly close to eliminating the coronavirus, but is now seeing a surge in new cases. What went wrong and can it regain control?
The country was initially able to contain covid-19 by closing its border to everyone except citizens and permanent residents, quarantining those returning home from abroad, implementing stay-at-home orders throughout the country, and conducting widespread testing and contact tracing. This brought the number of new confirmed cases down from 460 on 28 March to between two and 17 per day in early June.
However, since mid-June, there has been a resurgence, with around 300 to 400 new cases now being reported daily. As of 17 July the country has passed 11,000 cases and recorded 116 deaths, 14 of which are linked to the latest outbreak.
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Most of the new infections are occurring in the state of Victoria, with a smaller outbreak in neighbouring New South Wales.
łŐľ±ł¦łŮ´Ç°ůľ±˛ąâ€™s covid-19 spike cannot be pinned to its lifting of stay-at-home orders or its testing strategy, since its policies have closely matched the rest of Australia, which has remained relatively virus-free. Like other states and territories, Victoria started to relax its stay-at-home orders in mid-May. It also offers tests to anyone with even mild cold or flu symptoms, and conducts extensive contact tracing.
Instead, the new outbreak appears to be related to quarantine facilities.
Despite Australia’s border being closed since 20 March, Australian citizens and permanent residents have been allowed to return home on the condition that they stay in supervised quarantine hotels for two weeks. Most states and territories have deployed police and defence personnel to manage these facilities, but Victoria employed private security contractors.
Several contractors have since caught the virus from quarantined individuals, allegedly due to breaches in infection control measures, and then spread it to the wider community. Genomic sequencing of the virus has linked a significant number of the state’s new infections back to these security guards. The Victorian government has .
“Experience in other countries such as Singapore or [South] Korea has shown that the novel coronavirus will exploit any weakness in the public health system,” says David Paterson at the University of Queensland. “łŐľ±ł¦łŮ´Ç°ůľ±˛ąâ€™s weakness appears to have been leakage from quarantine,” he says.
The virus’s spread has been accelerated by large get-togethers that violated łŐľ±ł¦łŮ´Ç°ůľ±˛ąâ€™s limit of five guests to a home at a time. Because it is winter in Australia, people are also tending to gather inside, where respiratory viruses spread more easily, says Taghrid Istivan at RMIT University in Victoria.
The virus has also entered Melbourne’s public housing towers, where it has rapidly spread among closely packed residents.
To try to contain the virus, the Victorian government placed the affected tower blocks into a five-day “hard lockdown” on 4 July, during which time residents had to stay in their apartments. Officials also asked the residents to take tests for the virus and set up pop-up testing clinics in other covid-19 hotspot neighbourhoods.
On 8 July, stay-at-home orders were reintroduced for all Melbourne residents for six weeks, meaning they can only leave home to buy food, access medical care, exercise or go to school or work. Restaurants and cafes are not allowing dining in, and pools, playgrounds and gyms are closed.
These lockdowns should start to reduce new cases in the next week or so, says Hassan Vally at La Trobe University in Victoria. “I’m very optimistic that we’ll be able to gain control again,” he says.
In New South Wales, a smaller outbreak is centred around a Sydney pub that was visited by a Melbourne truck driver with covid-19. A total of 42 staff, patrons and their contacts had the virus as of 17 July.
New South Wales isn’t currently planning to reimpose stay-at-home orders, which is reasonable because case numbers there are still low, says Fiona Stanaway at the University of Sydney.
“Lockdowns are really effective at stopping transmission, but you want to reserve them for when you really need them because they have such an impact on people in terms of loss of jobs and mental health,” she says.
The resurgence of the virus in Australia shows that people must stay vigilant, says Vally. “As a community, we probably got a bit complacent – we felt we’d done the hard yards and were on the path back to pre-covid life,” he says. “This is a reminder to keep up social distancing, hand washing and wearing masks – we can’t get too relaxed.”
