There are hints that Greater Sydney may be facing a long, drawn-out lockdown as experts offer a reality check and cases continue to rise.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian would not commit to a firm lifting of lockdown rules on July 16 when the three-week lockdown is scheduled to end.
Instead, she said lockdown could only lift if people do the right thing – stay home, keep their distance from others, wear masks and get tested if symptomatic.
“We don’t want to prolong the lockdown,” she said. “We don’t want to see Sydney or NSW going in and out of lockdown. It is up to all of us to step up, as difficult as it is.
“You would expect me to be very direct and frank on what we need to focus on and I ask everybody who is under stay-at-home orders to really respect the rules that in place. They are there for a reason.”
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Ms Berejiklian said there would no “living with the virus” because “you can’t live with the Delta variant”.
“You can’t live reasonably with the Delta variance unless you have a certain proportion of the population vaccinated. That’s the bottom line,” she said.
“For us to think that we can control a very contagious variant without having a certain proportion of the population vaccinated would be an unrealistic assumption.”
Epidemiologist from the University of South Australia, Professor Adrian Esterman, told news.com.au the lockdown cannot end until case numbers drop dramatically.
“Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” Prof Esterman said.
“Well, despite the two-week lockdown, numbers have been hovering around the mid-20s, and I can’t see why they will go down with a further week of lockdown, unless there is further intervention.
“This means imposing even tighter restrictions like tightening the definition of an essential worker or introducing a curfew, and somehow getting better compliance with the regulations.”
Speaking to ABC Breakfast on Thursday, Raina Macintyre from the Kirby Institute said letting the virus continue to spread would be “really risky”.
“I think for Australia, for NSW, that’s a different proposition to countries that have high vaccination rates and high levels of disease. We’ve got virtually no immunity in the community because very few people have been fully vaccinated, and very few people have been infected,” she said.
“So we are absolutely susceptible. If we let it spread in Sydney, it could impact the whole country and we could end up with a situation like we saw in India in March and April.
“We can’t afford to relax until we’ve got the vaccination rates high.”
India reported more than 30 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of July 3, with about 402,000 fatalities.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard caused a stir on Wednesday when he suggested that there would soon come a time that NSW might succumb to the virus and be forced to accept that it will “continue in the community”.
“I think, at some stage, if the individuals that we need don’t hear Dr Chant’s message and don’t respond, then at some point we’re going to move to a stage where we’re going to have to accept that the virus has a life which will continue in the community,” he said.
“But we’re trying damned hard at the moment to make sure that we can use every effort to suppress that virus, and right now is a critical time.”
But the Premier on Thursday was adamant that at no time before the majority of Australians are vaccinated – or have been offered a vaccination – will any state attempt to live with the virus.