How Australia Beat COVID-1947

How Australia Beat COVID-1947

Australia has been hailed across the world as a COVID-19 success story while the UK is still crippled by its grip. It’s because of a “serious mistake”.

Australia is a fortress of hope in a world conquered by COVID-19. But, even as vaccines raise the prospect of relief, the siege is growing stronger. And the cracks in our defences are growing.

All are being blamed across the world for overwhelmed health systems, stalled economies and soaring death rates.

Australia has dodged these bullets. So far.

A federal government accused of repeatedly ignoring expert advice before the devastating 2019 bushfires was suddenly eager to put epidemiologists at the heart of the public health emergency.

Go fast. Go hard. That’s the advice Australia – and its states – received and acted upon.

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Australia’s tactic of going hard means life has been able to return to relative normal. Bondi Beach on Australia Day. Picture: Matrix Media GroupSource:Matrix

Meanwhile, the United States prevaricated. Great Britain hesitated.

Profit versus pandemic equations were being crunched around the world.

   

Now they’re paying the price.

Some 451,000 people have so far died in the US, and its economy contracted 3.5 per cent. The toll is about 108,000 in the UK. The economic contraction is about 9.7 per cent.

In Australia, 909 lives have been taken by this poorly understood disease.

And its economy, while wounded, remains in fighting form. Can it stay that way?

A DEFEATED WORLD

“Everything broke,” WHO health emergencies head Michael Ryan told the World Health Organisation’s Executive Board’s annual meeting last week.

International agreements. International law. International co-operation.

All went by the wayside in the face of COVID-19.

The board heard that – despite years of warnings – preparations for global pandemic were not adequate. That alert and response systems were outmoded. That warning signs were ignored.

This is why it took the WHO four weeks after the virus was identified to declare a “public health emergency of international concern”.

But the blame doesn’t only rest with the WHO.

“(Even then), too many countries failed to act quickly and decisively enough to apply necessary and recommended public health measures,” says pandemic preparedness head Helen Clark.

Even the testing needed to identify the pandemic’s spread failed, Mr Ryan says.

“It was not just a supply issue,” he explained. “There were manufacturing issues. There were raw material issues. There were distribution issues. There were error issues. There were competitive issues between member states.”

And there were societal issues – such as conspiracy theories and disinformation from trusted sources.

“A closer look at the international response to COVID-19 reveals two new developments that have exacerbated the impact of and response to the pandemic – politicisation and securitisation,” US Council on Foreign Relations global health senior fellow Yanzhong Huang wrote in Foreign Affairs.

“It did not have to be this bad. The inconsistency and incompetence of President Donald Trump’s administration compounded the toll of the pandemic, but so did larger forces partly beyond any one government’s control, from politics to protectionism to paranoia.”"If you'd asked me a year ago, can you imagine a circumstance where Australia was at zero cases but the world was at 630,000 cases in a day, I would have struggled to be so bold to have made that prediction, so our efforts are extraordinary,",

So when the Lowy Institute released its analysis of the countries with the most effective , some were surprised to see Australia scraping into the top 10 at number eight.

The think tank tracked six measures in 98 countries for 36 weeks after the country's 100th confirmed case. The Institute's Herve Lemahieu told the ABC that there wasn't one particular type of country that had stemmed the tide, but there seemed to be an advantage for smaller countries.

"One of the remarkable findings of this study is that there has been more or less a level playing field between developing and rich countries," he said.

Despite their success, the top 10 is a warning against complacency — with the New Zealand travel bubble suspended this week and Vietnam recording its worst single-day coronavirus outbreak so far.

So what lessons can we learn from the seven countries that trumped us? 

Australians beat back the COVID pandemic to just a few cases across the entire country. August 2020 following a second wave of COVID-19 cases in the community. Member of the World Health Organization (WHO) advisory panel for Local leaders set an improbable goal in the face of that challenge. 

"We need to sacrifice in the short-term to gain the long-term back. and to gain our lives. And it worked.” That's how the Australians beat back the COVID pandemic to just a few cases across the entire country. We discuss how Australia did it, and lessons for the U.S.