Covid 19 -

[FairmontGS]

Lucky break or gold standard? How NSW got Covid under control

After outbreaks in Sydney threatened to spoil the state’s summer, health authorities once again seem to have contained a flare-up without resorting to a city-wide lockdown

NSW’s containment was achieved without the premier, Gladys Berejikian, resorting to the drastic statewide lockdowns or business closures that many called for. Instead, the NSW approach was to focus lockdowns on the most affected suburbs and to reintroduce limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings without banning them altogether.

The NSW response to the outbreak came down to enormous confidence in its contact tracing system and ability to track cases. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, told reporters on 17 December: “NSW is the gold standard [of contact tracing]. I don’t spend too much time worrying about NSW.”

The chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, Prof Catherine Bennett, said: “I think what NSW has done really well is taken a nuanced approach, and tailor their approach to wherever the outbreak is, whatever the challenges are, whatever the opportunities are, and to put the restrictions in place as needed. And it’s proven to be enough.”

But Bennett said where NSW failed was in its approach to masks. “NSW weren’t gold standard on masks,” Bennett said. “Mandatory masks might have meant the person who went to the BWS store while infectious had a mask on and the person serving them had a mask on, and that might have been enough to stop the Berala cluster. We’ll never know what might have happened but I would argue, at least, the number of people infected through the BWS cluster could have been smaller or prevented in the first place.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-under-control