Outbreak: How Australia lost control of the COVID Delta variant | ABC News

[Music] we've seen a lot of numbers since the pandemic began but for australia if there's one number that sticks out the most it's this one zero australia is one of the most successful countries in the world at keeping covet in check australia is an example of a very successful result i'm in a country that has almost returned to normal after an initial wave and resurgence in melbourne australia's curve started looking more like a flat line donut days became the norm and the expectation zero new community cases until they weren't the graph that so proudly showed our success suddenly showed the opposite we just heard about those extreme measures being taken now in australia australian leaders are holding an emergency meeting australia has just reported another 800 new cases i want to trace back through the outbreak to see if we can find the moments where we lost control were there missed opportunities or mistakes or was this inevitable as we move into a new phase of the pandemic what happens next if parts of the country have said goodbye to covet zero what's the plan and how do we re-engage with the world melbourne's lockdown has now eased and there were no new cases of covert recorded in the state today june 11th victoria was taking its first steps out of its fourth lockdown this is a good day everyone should be absolutely proud of what we've all achieved together but on that very same day another outbreak was beginning across the border a limousine driver in sydney spent his first day infectious in the community a cafe in four clues along with a restaurant and most seriously westfield bondi junction authorities are now urging people who visited various venues in the eastern suburbs to get tested and isolate it was almost certainly airline crew who infected the driver but we'll never know for sure authorities say he wasn't wearing a mask he wasn't vaccinated and he wasn't getting tested every day your obligations are legal and they are to get saliva tested every day and to make sure you wear appropriate ppe it wasn't illegal the driver wasn't charged it was eight days later that the new south wales government made mask wearing and one dose of vaccine mandatory for quarantine workers we've always recognised that each time someone comes into australia there is that risk that they may be infected with covet 19 and the risk that we may see are further cases occurring the virus was in and this time it was different last night pathology confirmed that this gentleman has the delta strain of the virus [Music] now delta had first emerged in october of 2020 and ripped through india ngs capital has been locked down and been a staggering increase in the number of covet infections india is going through a very dire situation that we're trying to help in any way we can we knew it was more infectious public health england confirmed at the start of june that the variant was 64 percent more transmissible than alpha and that in turn was 50 more transmissible than the original wuhan strain there's kind of this sense of otherness of of india and that somehow it was india that was the reason that delta was spreading so fast there was already talk that the uk would have to delay its freedom day our main story this morning ministers are considering bringing forward second doses of corona iris vaccinations to tackle a rising cases linked to the indian variant and the delta was accounting for one in four cases in the us even leading epidemiologists didn't see the need to change our approach probably took a week or two to realize that delta was so much more transmissible and so much bigger a threat and so much harder to control professor michael kidd is australia's deputy chief health officer he knew when delta arrived that it presented a very different challenge you know my heart sank we were hoping as the vaccine started to roll out that things would get better and we'd be able to start opening up much more quickly and then the delta variant appeared and that disrupted of course a lot of those plans on june the 18th new south wales was told to largely go about its business masks were back on public transport but that was all we don't want anyone to cancel any events and why not there was only one new infection that day [Music] but inside the westfield shopping center at bondi junction something had happened that authorities in sydney hadn't seen before it appears from cct cameras that it could have been a very fleeting contact this was the moment that changed everything it took less than 15 seconds for one case to ignite a cluster you know once you started seeing contacts that were not close contacts in the way we usually think even though they were linked that certainly would have started twigging people that this was something different by the weekend there were two more cases from bondi junction and exposure sites were spreading from vork clues to redfern castle hill and a joe bailey hairdresser in double bay instead of a lockdown there were guidelines we asked that you minimize your exposure to other people until you get a negative test that means wearing a mask if you're out working from home if you can i thought a lighter lockdown was better and it seemed to work two or three times so you know experience teaches you things by sunday it was nine cases and we didn't know it then but things had already got a whole lot worse the real challenge for us at this stage is to prevent any super spreading events because we know that if you own a group of people if one person had the but has the virus the level of contagion is so high that uh we're concerned that everybody might get the virus three days earlier in west hoxton that super spreading scenario had already happened but they didn't really learn from melbourne when melbourne tried to shut down certain postal codes totally didn't work i mean that's not how covet works right it doesn't stick to a postal code so instead of kind of shutting down all of sydney they shut down certain postal codes and it continued to grow beyond there now this is one of the most significant moments in this outbreak this is when the virus escaped sydney's east and entered the southwest 40 people attended the party one from joe bailey in double bay was infected because that party is some distance we're hoping that everyone was fully in isolation and therefore pose no further risk to the community [Applause] authorities have now admitted this was a major oversight it was unknown at the time that there wasn't containment of the west hoxton park party there is concern that there was leakage at that point that was not recognised at the time this was more people being infected than we'd seen in similar circumstances with the earlier variants in the original wuhan strain the 30 people who eventually tested positive were out and about in southwestern sydney the virus was on the run and within four days there were 22 cases mainly in the local government areas of camden and liverpool things were under control in the eastern suburbs but then it gets to hoxton park uh there were some uh issues which perhaps not well known in the public about how many people were actually forthcoming with their uh with their attendance of that party and and then it was gone so you only needed a couple of generations of transmission with you know six to eight people who who would uh would get covered after that for this outbreak to seed and then become very difficult to control by midweek there were 38 cases and a growing sense of urgency we've gone from that near and present danger to a very real and present danger not just in a shopping centre but right across sydney masks now had to be worn indoors and it was back to the four square meter rule for hospitality venues but no lockdown one full week since the first case was reported this is perhaps the scariest period that new south wales is going through the next day there was finally something that sounded like a lockdown you can use whatever word you like but what is really important is for me to explain to our citizens who is directly impacted and what our citizens can and can't do it only applied to four local council areas in sydney's east south western sydney was left to go about in relative freedom and so was the virus so the lockdown in new south wales i don't think would have made much difference whether it was done when it was or one week earlier we just would have been on a different part of the curve but the curve would still be going up testing rates in the eastern suburbs were up to 30 percent of the total population at this stage of the outbreak in fairfield it was around 1.5 i'm not sure it's superior or inferior public health measures i think it's the communities that it gets into then the very next day from 6 pm today all of greater sydney the blue mountains the central coast and wollongong will go into a lockdown the case numbers had left to 82 up 29 in just one day almost all were linked and new south wales was confident it could keep up up until now delta had been confined to sydney but it was about to appear in one of the most remote places in the country it was linked to a gold miner who stayed overnight at a quarantine hotel where he caught the virus before traveling to a mine in the tanamay desert by the time he tested positive 900 workers had already left and travelled interstate one case tested positive after arriving back in darwin we know how infectious this can be one case turns into two two and a four we know what happens i would rather regret us going too hard too early then go too easy and risk it all so after 479 days without a single case of community transmission darwin entered lockdown [Music] but delta hadn't just gone north it also headed west a woman who'd been at the life cafe in bondi had flown back home to perth the cafe was listed as an exposure site on the 24th of june she was positive but she'd been out in the community for three days while infectious on monday two others who'd come into contact with that case also tested positive australia's elimination ambitions were being put to the test we know the risk over present presents and we know from around the world that the delta strain is another new beast that we can't take any chances with that is why based on advice from the chief health officer effective from midnight to night person peel will enter a full lockdown both western australia and the northern territory were out to prove the hard and fast lockdowns were the way to go if there had been a lot of spread of covid i think the the government of wa understood that it would be a complete disaster because it could have spread far and wide before they contained it because there's nothing in place to control the spread so it's locked down extremely quickly and i think that that made a huge difference delta had been beaten and new south wales looked isolated i don't regret a single decision we've taken because all of it's been based on the health advice but health advice is based on evidence so you know the best evidence is the same whether you're living in victoria if you're living in western australia you you go on evidence in just five days case numbers doubled and the questions were getting louder there are stores open today that sell jewelry furniture lingerie stores louis vuitton stores are open aren't you by not defining what's essential forcing people to go to work you told people not to go browsing so what should what should those stores do should they just close exposure sites like kmart ikea bunnings were appearing daily during the outbreak in the act one hardware store recorded 19 000 qr code chickens in a single day new south wales unlike other states has never determined what is essential and what is not essential failing to define essential work and allowing luxury leather good sales sales stores to continue to be open basically leaving it to the decision of the employer who should shouldn't be considered essential work i think that that was another lost opportunity and maybe it wouldn't have worked maybe it could have shut down all the businesses and it still wouldn't have worked but um but i think that was a lost opportunity to try and do everything to control this by the end of june the bondi cluster was linked to 172 cases the biggest ever cluster in new south wales so by now every state had shut its borders to sydney but that doesn't stop everyone on the morning of july the 8th a trio of removalists left sydney headed for victoria just after midday they picked up furniture from a family at the ariel apartments they spent the night in regional victoria before they moved onwards to adelaide on the 9th of july on the 10th of july geelong was taking on carlton at the mcgee [Applause] apartments he didn't know it yet but he was infectious with covered we've identified 2 000 people in the members reserve at the mcc members reserve at the mcg the next day melbourne was in lockdown you only get one chance to go hard and go fast if you wait if you hesitate if you doubt then you will always be looking back wishing you had done more earlier now that was a very pointed reference to what was going on in new south wales after the northern territory and wa had stopped their outbreaks it looked like this was the way to go it soon became a showdown of ideologies we need a ring of steel around sydney so that this virus is not spreading into other parts of our nation i'm not the type of premier that's going to be asking citizens to do things we don't think are going to have any effect right so whenever i get questions about curfews or exercise or whatever else the facts are that will not change the dial lessons have been learned various states have done very good jobs of enrolling hoover give them credit but we could have done it in a much more conciliatory cooperative way a lot less of pain and suffering the state goes rogue and behaves in an irresponsible fashion you've got to expect other states to uh use the measures uh that we have to protect ourselves from that at least is consistent i think the quality of public messaging was excellent in the first wave where we were largely in lockstep and the australian health protection principle committee was functioning in unison uh because the premiers were functioning in unison but as soon as that fractured it's been very very difficult and the average member of the australian community doesn't know what to listen to active cases in the community had always been the benchmark authorities were watching most closely the measure of our success will be to limit the number of people who've been out and about in the community now here are the daily case numbers up till that point and here's the number of cases that were infectious in the community each day that number was growing this was delta at work transmission was happening faster and more frequently than before i don't think anyone really knew that it would only take literally a day or two to get behind in your contact tracing before things got out of out of control over the course of the next week the situation spiraled and the government's position changed several times the settings we have in place are having an impact from midnight tonight only critical retail remains open there will be a pause on all construction you cannot leave for work in those local government areas until july 30 at least the green shoots are there and i'm convinced that in the next few days we will start seeing hopefully more improvement the situation that exists now in new south wales is regarded as a national emergency [Music] we know transmission is going through households from household to household that was a problem in southwestern sydney there's an average of 3.3 residents in each home compared to the rest of sydney at 2.6 and there's a higher percentage of people who can't work from home there was confusion about whether they could go to work or not what we've seen during the outbreaks of delta is that if one member of the household becomes infected with covert 19 of the delta variant usually all members of that household are being infected so this was different from what we've been dealing with before by the end of july the cases were rising faster than ever and contact traces couldn't keep up the percentage of positive cases that were being interviewed within 24 hours was falling behind it dipped below 100 for the first time on the 17th and has been declining ever since well a council of perfection would have had us have twice as many contact traces and working really really hard and we might have got on top of it but it was always going to come back and that's the problem the numbers in new south wales were not falling and the language had been shifting we're giving it our best shot to stop all community transmission get back to zero but if that's not possible then then we'll have to look at what does plan b look like even if elimination remained the ideal epidemiologists were beginning to tell the government that the combination of case numbers and delta meant getting rid of the virus altogether was no longer a realistic goal being increasingly unrealistic to just want zero clover because zero crovid means you know isolation for australia and and and constant risk of outbreaks with importations you know we would be living with that forever australia needed a new way out it was around this time that the government commissioned the doherty institute to come up with a new plan it's not a crystal ball we don't know that modelling will exactly predict the future but it can paint scenarios of different factors that are going to heavily influence the future but it's really just one piece of a very complex puzzle but the doheri plan was still a way off for now the prime minister confirmed the hard fast lockdowns favored by many states were the new gold standard early and stridgent and short lockdowns will be necessary to deal with outbreaks in this delta strain that is a clear learning of the events of recent weeks and months in victoria it appeared they'd conquered another outbreak using that approach with a donut day on august the 4th these outbreaks are not over until we've got everybody cleared until all remaining leads have been closed down to drive this outbreak fully into the ground but before the day was out a new case popped up in melbourne's west this afternoon we now know the new cases had nothing to do with the removalists try as they might the incursions kept coming this gets away from us and we are potentially locked down until we all get vaccinated victoria was doing what had proved successful before and locked down hard but this time it wasn't fast enough the new exposure size dated back nine days with the case at the altacra college the previous wednesday the the challenge of course is that many of the people who were infected in that outbreak were younger people are often asymptomatic or with very mild symptoms so we were getting chains of transmission before we were picking up some of the the cases and then being able to trace back the beginning of melbourne's sixth outbreak had other similarities with the new south wales situation like sydney there was a fleeting transmission inside a shopping center we are concerned about it these are settings where lots of people move through like sydney testing rates were low i need those numbers to increase we need to see more people in the carolina springs area coming forward for testing like sydney cases were out in the community before being identified as positive shopping for food going out for essential reasons and like sydney the links between positive cases were not there we have accountants we have architects we have a sex worker we have uh members of the orthodox jewish community and we have a pizza guy who works in a pizza shop pizza shop in glen ira it is a very broad and disparate range of people so i think that the real turning point for this entire outbreak and the entire pandemic for australia when you look back when you write the history books will be in june of 2020 when not only did we seem to not be calling pfizer to see about making a deal for mrna vaccines in fact we didn't take their calls it's surprising then at this point that the act surrounded as it is by new south wales had stayed virus free that couldn't last this is the most serious public health risk that we have faced in the territory this year really since the beginning of the pandemic again hard and fast was the tactic we're going to get back to zero that's the objective uh through this process but once again delta moved faster than the lockdown could we've had 19 new covered cases overnight we're potentially looking at more than one introduction but it's actually really hard to unravel and unpick all of that you see how hard it's been for the act to get control of its outbreak because they don't have the source they have the first person they identified but they don't know where they got it from so again lots of chains of transmission that may be out there that you haven't yet identified so they keep kind of popping up the act seemed to do everything right the lockdown was swift and hard testing was at an all-time high but the outbreak was stubborn a weekend they weren't seeing the results they expected and then as the impact of the lockdown does start to have to work progressively moving forward those cases will fall we learned because of delta coming along from around june of 2021 that lockdowns were no longer the effective measure that we thought they were and it took us a couple of months to learn that and we're only still learning more about that through the fast and early lockdown in victoria not appearing to work delta was now entrenched in australia's southeastern corner unfortunately overnight we did see an increase number of cases 825 it kept going up 882 cases of community transmission 1029 cases 1164 cases while those numbers were big one number was not so bad the reproduction rate of the virus in sydney was sitting around 1.3 around the same time a leaked document from america's cdc showed delta's reproduction rate could be up to seven or nine the original covent strain had an r rate of three meaning one person spreads it to three other people sars has an r rate of four chickenpox has an r rate of 10 so an r rate of seven to nine for delta makes it one of the more transmissible viruses the fact that sydney was holding the reproduction rate so much lower was proof the lockdowns were having an effect in the last couple of days i've noticed a change in attitude amongst all of us we accept the delta is here we accept getting to zero across the nation especially once you open up and live freely will be an impossible task the ict and victoria couldn't budge their stubborn numbers daniel andrews accepted the inevitable the data and the evidence and the experts are very clear with us we will not see these case numbers go down they are going to go up the question is by how many and how fast that admission was a bit of a watershed moment new south wales was no longer out on its own australia's two biggest states were moving on the pandemic is endemic that it's here to stay for the parts of australia still living without coven the time will come where the virus is allowed in the deteriorating situation around the country is a major wake-up call for south australia there are no easy choices here there are no simple choices it's often a choice of the least worst outcome it's actually going to be a benefit to us to to have these outbreaks they need to be better contained of course we need to see the numbers coming down in new south wales but ultimately this is going to teach us how to live with covert in the healthcare system the silver lining here is that the take-up of vaccines has accelerated at an astonishing rate and in southwestern sydney where the vaccination rates were some of the lowest in the nation they're now among the highest at the start of july new south wales had vaccinated just 9 of the population the outbreak has inspired the state to one of the fastest vaccination rates in the world australia is headed for over 80 percent of our population being fully vaccinated something few other countries have achieved looking back on the early days of the outbreak we never really stood a chance against delta that was the big difference and without good vaccine coverage we had no protection the pandemic continues to evolve it continues to set its own rules but australia's year and a half of chasing covert zero wasn't all for naught it bought time we lived on our island in relative normality while the world developed vaccines at an unprecedented pace we're going to get better vaccines we're going to understand how to use them better we're going to get better testing regimens we're going to get better treatments we'll use science and we'll use all the other um public health measures that we've got in place in australia we're going to achieve higher rates i'm quite sure of double dosing than almost any western country that is the answer that as they say is the best health advice you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

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Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, lockdown, australia outbreak, australia coronavirus, covid, delta variant, sydney outbreak, sydney coronavirus, victoria outbreak, NSW outbreak, australia lockdown

Id: M9MPXCpyCnY

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021