“The epidemic peak could be delayed with public health safety measures until the boosters kick in,allowing the program to have greater impact.”
The modelling has been given to federal,state and territory leaders ahead of their national cabinet meeting on Wednesday to discuss boosters and public health measures.
Health ministers and premiers in NSW and Victoria are pushing the federal government to fast-track advice from theAustralian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to speed up boosters,after earlier this month bringing them forward from six to five months after the second vaccination.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Queensland on Tuesday thatAustralians would not face further lockdowns while supporting calls for masks to be worn indoors.
NSW and Victoria are demanding the federal government give more funding to GPs,pharmacists and the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector to ensure a smooth and rapid booster rollout,while the federal government wants states to keep their vaccination hubs running.
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The Doherty Institute modellers,who drew upon South African data to model an “intermediate” Omicron scenario,forecast about 250,000 cases a day by late January under a six-month booster regime with no mask mandates and all current freedoms maintained.
Without some restrictions on movement,bringing forward boosters to three months would only lower the peak daily infection rate to 190,000,the model said.
Future waves of infections would require “repeat boosting”,the modellers said.
While the modelling does not recommend specific restrictions,the Doherty Institute defines “low” public health safety measures as “capacity limits on recreational activities,limits on retail group sizes and restrictions on workplace capacity”,but no stay-at-home orders.
“Medium” public health safety measures are defined as “stay-at-home except for work,study and essential purposes,retail and cafes or restaurants open subject to density restrictions,working from home if possible with density restrictions in workplaces”.
Indoor recreational venues would be closed under medium restrictions,with small numbers of household visitors allowed and the possibility of school closures.
Professor Peter Collignon,an infectious diseases expert at the Australian National University,questioned if cases would soar to the level outlined in the modelling,saying the shift into the summer months and high vaccination levels would help stem the spread.
“Cases will likely go up over the next month,slowly drop off and then really kick up next winter,” Professor Collignon said.
“What is more important is the hospital admissions,rather than the number of cases. Although we don’t know the severity of Omicron,for the unvaccinated the consequences are still significant.“
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Professor Catherine Bennett,chair of epidemiology at Deakin University,said limits to testing capacity would mean it would be “impossible to know when we are getting even close to those numbers.”
“If we hit that kind of infection level we will have fundamentally changed how we are managing virus in community,with a view to protecting hospitals and protecting most vulnerable.”
Professor Bennett said a critical factor when examining modelling is how much natural immunity from Omicron will dampen the spread in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
“We are all going to get coronavirus. What Omicron has done has sped that up. But the question still remains about what Omicron’s true virulence is compared to Delta.”
with Lucy Carroll
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