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#ONE CASE TOTAL LOCKDOWN AUSTRALIAS LESSONS HOW TO#

Government advisors sounded the alarm in mid-September but the policy responses that followed those warnings were weak. Cases picked up in late August, arguably exacerbated by government policies, and the spread of the virus accelerated in September as educational settings returned. Last time, though, the exit strategy didn’t work.

#ONE CASE TOTAL LOCKDOWN AUSTRALIAS LESSONS HOW TO#

While there are positive signs, it is far from clear that it will be possible to remove all restrictions without having in place a comprehensive containment infrastructure, involving digital health credentials, better incentives for self-isolation and widespread availability of rapid testing as TBI has advocated.Īfter a gruelling winter lockdown, with Covid-19 fatality rates receding and vaccine rollout going better than expected, a weary country is looking to the government to set out its exit strategy.Īs we wait to find out the government’s plans for how to ease restrictions, there are strong parallels with early May, when the government set in motion its path back to normality after the first wave of the pandemic. Once the vaccination rollout is complete, the degree to which life will be able to return to normal is very sensitive to the proportion of the population covered and the effectiveness of the vaccines in preventing transmission. HM Treasury should collaborate with SPI-M to develop and publish regular modelling on the interaction of the spread of the virus and economic activity under the government’s proposed plan and alternatives. A rigid national or regional approach alone will involve unnecessary economic and social costs to contain the virus.

Measures should operate at national, regional and local authority level.

Therefore, at the heart of the plan, as TBI has argued since the early weeks of the pandemic, should be a clear framework of tiers of restrictions that are linked explicitly to the alert levels adjudicated by the JBC. For all the prime minister’s determination that steps out of lockdown should be irreversible, the paradox is that only a clear determination to take whatever action is necessary to keep case numbers falling can make that a reality.

Easing steps – and, if necessary, tightening – should be contingent on the data.

The government should ask the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) to assess the likely path of the virus under its proposed exit plan and if necessary adjust the timetable to meet its own policy objective.

While any of these goals is plausible, in practice only a policy of keeping R consistently below 1 is likely to be deliverable.

The plan must set out a clear policy objective – whether that be to prevent hospital overload, keep new cases below a given level or ensure that case numbers continue to fall.As a result we are now paying the price in the form of a severe second wave lockdown to contain a much more transmissible variant.Ī better plan to emerge from lockdown this time should follow five steps: The Treasury underestimated the economic implications of inadequate suppression of the virus.The lack of a link was central to the government acting too late to stop the second wave. There was no link between expert assessment of the state of alert and the suppression measures The Joint Biosecurity Centre’s (JBC) alert system has no relationship to the tiered restrictions later introduced.That remains the case today, as evidenced by the fact that different cabinet ministers appear to disagree on whether scientific advisors are “shifting the goalposts”. There was no clarity on the government’s objective.

What lessons should we take from the missteps last time? The government made three critical errors in its approach to easing restrictions between May and October: Ultimately only the comprehensive national lockdown we are currently enduring has been sufficient to bring case numbers under control. Case numbers accelerated through the autumn and a new, more transmissible variant of the virus emerged. The last exit strategy, which began in May 2020, conspicuously failed to achieve this. Yet what the public wants is a clear, comprehensive and consistent plan to optimise health and economic outcomes, and return life to normal as quickly as it is safe to do so. The path and pace of that plan appear to be being driven as much by political pressure as they are by data and scientific advice.

Next week, all eyes will be on the prime minister’s new roadmap out of national lockdown.