NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said it was difficult to make fixed statements about a virus that was evolving.Credit:James Brickwood
There were 82 cases in hospital including 24 in the intensive care unit and seven receiving ventilation.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the transmissibility of the Delta variant had prompted a “rethink” about whether the state could reopen with an 80 per cent vaccination rate among the adult population and that vaccination would also need to be available for children,particularly those of high school age.
“I think we need to see that our journey of living with COVID is going to be a long one,” Dr Chant said. “We will have to adjust to whatever the virus delivers. That is why it is always hard to make fixed statements,but in short I think there will be a key role for vaccinating children and also having booster vaccination rolled out quite quickly as well.”
There was an undersupply of vaccinations in Australia but it was pleasing to see that some countries had vaccines licensed for use in children,Dr Chant said. The government would continue to prioritise vaccines by age and underlying conditions.
But infectious diseases specialists said the long-term data on whether COVID-19 vaccination was safe and effective for children was not yet available,and vaccination would need to be justified when children were considerably less likely than adults to become very sick or die from the virus.
Most COVID-19 infections in Australia have been recorded in the 20-29 year age group,according to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System,followed by the 30-39s,40-49s,50-59s and then teenagers. Children aged 0 to 9 have a lower infection rate than 60-somethings. Nobody under the age of 20 has died.
Professor Peter Collignon,an infectious diseases expert at the Australian National University,said the greater number of infections among children only reflected the transmissibility of the Delta variant and it did not mean they were more likely than adults to become infected. The data coming out of the UK on infection rates was skewed because more adults than children had been vaccinated.