If Sydney’s outbreak mirrors Melbourne’s last year, we should see cases peak this week. If they keep rising, it’ll be very “bad news” for Sydney says one expert.
All things going well, Sydney’s coronavirus outbreak may well peak this week – that’s the lesson from Melbourne.
But if the numbers don’t start dropping over the coming days, then all bets are off for when the lockdown could end.
A leading epidemiologist has said there are “a lot of similarities” between Melbourne’s outbreak of 2020 and Sydney’s current Covid-19 crisis which is now in its fifth week.
However, there are a number of factors that differ and could throw the city off track, Australian National University professor of infectious diseases Peter Collignon told news.com.au.
One, of course, is this time around we’re dealing with the Delta variant. However, in addition, Sydney appears to be tackling a rolling series of mini outbreaks hopping around the city. And, he said, some Sydneysiders may “not be following even the lighter lockdown rules” leading to the outbreak continuing for longer.
How Melbourne’s 2020 outbreak panned out
On Monday, NSW recorded 145 new Covid-19 infections, its second highest total of the current outbreak after reaching 163 cases on Saturday.
Looking back at Victoria’s outbreak may give some idea of how Sydney’s current woes might pan out.
In mid-June 2020, Melbourne went from very few cases to a peak of 687 on August 5 – around six or so weeks later.
The Victorian Government introduced its highest level of restrictions on August 2, just a few days before that peak was reached.
The rolling average continued to hover around a high of 450 cases daily until 10 days or so after those new restrictions were put in place before steadily dropping – albeit with some spikes here and there.
It then took around another six weeks for Melbourne’s cases to fall to relatively negligible levels, although it was late October before there were no cases at all.
The NSW government introduced its toughest restrictions yet on July 18. So if they were to have exactly the same effect as Victoria, then we would already have passed the single day peak and the rolling average of 135 cases could be on the cusp of dropping later this week.
RELATED: Delta outbreak in NSW surprises experts
‘Lots of similarities’ between Sydney and Melbourne
“In some ways there are lots of similarities between the Melbourne outbreak and the current Sydney outbreak,” said Prof Collignon.
“In Melbourne, there was lots of community transmission for a while and then it was essentially in workplaces and households which sounds familiar.
“I’d hope there would be a similar trajectory in Sydney.”
However Prof Collignon sounded a note of caution saying while the “curve” of new infections was relatively flat, it was yet to head down which could be expected seven days after restrictions were introduced.
“I would have hoped we would have started to see some effect already. It’s a different curve to Melbourne.”
Part of the challenge is Delta which is twice as infectious as previous variants and is stretching the capacity of contact tracers.
And of course there is ongoing debate about the finer points of the Sydney restrictions.
Unlike Melbourne last year, there is no curfew, a limit of 10km rather than 5km and mask wearing doesn’t needed to happen outdoors unless it’s crowded. Although within the hot spots areas there are some extra restrictions on top of that.
RELATED: NSW lockdown may be in place until Christmas
‘Bad news’ for Sydney
But Prof Collignon said the virus was circulating in the far harder to manage environment of homes and workplaces. And that’s where Sydney could be coming unstuck.
“To a degree, it feels like some in the community are not following even the lighter lockdown rules. That’s the impression,” he said.
“We’ve had examples given of people having parties and families visiting other families.”
On the weekend, NSW Health said one recent family gathering of 50 people, grieving the loss of a loved one, had led to 28 positive cases so far.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian referenced the gathering as she implored families and friends not to meet up.
“Do not mingle, do not have any exposure outside of your household with other households,” she said.
“We are still seeing that as a challenge. Especially as we have seen at a time of bereavement but we can’t allow exceptions at this point.”
Goes down in one area, then up in another
Prof Collignon said this difficulty in stamping out the virus was leading to a series of mini-outbreaks, one after another, across Sydney that were keeping the cases numbers constant.
“It’s not rising exponentially but the bad news is it’s not coming down quickly enough,” he said.
“Once it comes down in one area, it goes up in another. So in the eastern suburbs (where the current outbreak first took off) it’s completely gone down.
“It also looks like Fairfield is going down, but in neighbouring Canterbury-Bankstown numbers are going up.”
University of South Australia epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman said the five-day average of cases was still rising even though the outbreak should have “reached its peak and started coming down”.
“Clearly, the lockdown either is not hard enough, or there are too many Sydneysiders not complying with lockdown,” he told news.com.au.
The ace in Sydney’s pack
Ideally, Prof Collignon said, essential workers should be as far away from one another as possible.
They should be lunching separately, outdoors preferably, and wearing mouth and eye masks when working together.
Families with one member with Covid-19 should look at even wearing masks indoors.
Nonetheless, Prof Collignon said he there was one huge ace that Sydney had this year that Melbourne didn’t in 2020.
“Sydney is still in a very good position even with Delta and that’s because (some) people are vaccinated – up to 90 per cent in aged care where many of the deaths came from in Melbourne,” he said.
“That high vaccination rate gives those people protection from Covid.”
There have been 10 deaths linked to the current Sydney outbreak so far. But he expected that overall Sydney will see a lower proportion of fatalities than Melbourne did last year when 800 people passed away.
In addition, the numbers in Sydney are also nowhere near Melbourne’s peak of 650 plus, meaning the city has less to do to get back towards zero. It took Victoria about three weeks to get from its peak rolling average of 400 or more cases to the around 100 currently in NSW.
If Sydney is destined to follow Melbourne’s trajectory then cases should begin falling consistently this week.
If that doesn’t happen, then Sydney could be in for a very different outbreak indeed.
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