The Delta Variant: How this new strain of COVID is in a league of it's own | 60 Minutes Australia

australia's obsession with every new coveted infection that's recorded here is turning us into a nation of neurotics it's a bastard of a virus but surely it doesn't have to dominate every waking moment of our lives getting the country vaccinated will ease the pain but more immediately so might looking overseas in other parts of the world despite the highly transmissible delta strain running rampant restrictions are being lifted and life is beginning to look like normal of course without full herd immunity those nations are taking enormous gambles and there are many who vehemently oppose the strategy but for the sake of our sanity is it something that we should consider [Music] if there's a sign of britain's defines of covert it's here at wimbledon capacity crowds are back again euphorically embracing the tennis and the joys of an english summer this is absolutely primo in amongst the throng is james contos an australian who's lived in london for the past five years there's definitely a party atmosphere i can speak amongst kind of people my age i'm 32. kind of people in their 20s and 30s there's there's definitely a lot of excitement a lot of kind of built up pressure um from the last 18 months and there's more to coming to people booking holidays booking festivals throwing parties out and about all the time so it should be a pretty good summer with his mates by his side it's a little like emerging from a mass hibernation this is the first big event james has been to after 18 long months dominated by pandemic imposed isolation you're really making up for lost time are you yeah yeah absolutely people have been locked in their houses and they're not anymore and it's summertime and people are vaccinated and i think the country feels like it paid a massive massive price to earn this freedom and to earn this rights to go and have a great time a year ago wimbledon didn't even happen cancelled for the first time since world war ii britain was in the dismal depths of lockdown its handling of the pandemic a complete and utter disaster thank you my name is michael kane i've just had a vaccine for covid it didn't hurt not many people know that star power was barely needed to persuade people to take the vaccine the brutal toll of the pandemic was incentive enough numbers over there are soaring at the moment why is there no panic the vaccine the vaccine and i think the price we paid was the reason there was so much urgency behind the um the vaccine program and maybe why australia didn't quite have the same urgency as us because um they you know over there the people got through relatively scot-free and then maybe to a degree paying for it a little bit now are you proud of where your country's at at the moment i'm very proud that we've been able to develop the vaccine and use it along with other vaccines and it was always about having as many vaccines available as possible it's very good that we've been able to get a high vaccination rate and now we can look to to moving on to the next phase leaders who have developed the anti-cova vaccines a couple of weeks ago the wimbledon crowd showed vaccine pioneer dame sarah gilbert its appreciation with a standing ovation that went viral around the world well the rise on centre court one of the biggest cheers you'll ever hear in the sporting stadium the scientists responsible for astrazeneca humbled by this spontaneous display of support well that was really unexpected i thought i was just going to go there and watch some tennis and be quietly in the background but it was great to have that reception for on behalf of everybody who's worked on the vaccine so really great to have that recognition does it really sink in at a moment like that how much your work means to to so many people i suppose it does i suppose it does um you know it's it's a huge team effort we need to remember that all the time that you know we all work together on this and really pleased now to see it being widely used with 86 percent of adults in the uk having had at least one jab on tuesday prime minister boris johnson took a big step towards what may or may not be the end game we must be honest with ourselves that if we can't reopen our society in the next few weeks when will we be able to return to normal on july the 19th most of the remaining covert restrictions will be torn up on what's been dubbed freedom day our vaccines have helped to break the link between disease and death did you get a thrill seeing life starting to come back to normal everybody be really pleased to see life come back to normal i think we've got some way to go yet we're not moving into a post-covid world yet in the uk we're moving into a post-restrictions world with the new announcements that restrictors are going to be lifted quite soon but we know there's going to be a lot of this virus around in fact case numbers are going up quite sharply at the moment and we're seeing very low rates going into hospital now but not zero so it's moving into the next phase we're not completely going back to normal yet britain's now decided it can co-exist with covert comfortably enough but that's a risky state of mind when the dangerous delta variant is rampaging through its population what do you think when you see crowds at wimbledon and full stadiums at the euros it's worrisome i think having a fanciful dream that the delta variant is over once we release our lockdowns and see cases fall is a complete pipe dream world-renowned epidemiologist dr eric feigl ding is far from alone in being deeply pessimistic about britain's jump into the unknown the delta variant really is a game changer isn't it yes delta variant is not like any variant we've seen it is leaps and bounds faster in transmissibility more contagious than any variant known to date this is why delta variant is the greatest scourge that we've faced so far in the pandemic today [Music] the delta variant first emerged in india last october wreaking havoc before spreading across the globe a mutated version of covert twice as transmissible as the original it's now reached almost 100 countries since its arrival in britain it's rapidly become the dominant strain responsible for 90 percent of all infections to eric allowing it to run free is a terrible blunder if we let the virus spread in the population it will infect a lot of people it will sicken a lot of people it will kill a lot of people and it will give long covet to a lot of people there is still lots of room for the virus to mutate we want to stop transmission stop the opportunistic chances for it to develop a mutation daily cases in the uk are now more than 30 000 with new infections expected to surge well beyond 100 000 per day in just a few weeks time for the unvaccinated delta is just as dangerous as previous strains perhaps even more so but here's what british decision makers say is now the important measuring stick the rates of hospitalizations and deaths are relatively low it's only early days but it appears the vaccine is doing its job when you see case numbers soaring like they are in the uk at the moment do you then worry about society reopening fully as is expected on july 19. that's a very difficult decision to be made about when to start lifting the restrictions the concern is if it's pushed late uh we'll actually end up in a situation where we've just delayed the rising cases until winter when flu may be circulating as well and we know that flu and covert together is really really bad news so trying to balance all of those different options the decision has been made to to lift restrictions in july but i think we have to keep a very close eye on what's happening and if we see more people starting to go into hospital maybe think again about some of these measures what happens in britain is a look into a future when we too have a highly vaccinated population and start to open up our borders but there's no doubt it's one almighty gamble london at the moment is a bit of a lab rat for the world yeah it feels like it feels like a petri dish for sure and i can see from international newspapers that the world is watching um it's it's it's been called the great gamble it hadn't struck me but we are the first place in the world to um continue opening up in the face of insane case numbers um but again we're we're also fairly unique in the world in how well vaccinated the population is so yeah i do see why it's gotten being seen as an experiment um and it's it's really really seems to be the vaccine and the virus going head-to-head so uh yeah very interesting times who's gonna win i hope the vaccine it is hope though isn't it that no one really knows no one really knows but we've learned over the last 18 months covet doesn't quit and now the fear is variants even more dangerous than delta could be on the way it is incredibly contagious and evasive because we have given it the playground to learn how to adapt to our bodies it is not over we cannot rest and let up because the virus will learn to adapt and evolve an even more evasive more faster contagious version [Music] in israel they've reached the promised land when it comes to covert 19 getting enough of the population vaccinated to fully open up again summer on the shores of the sun-soaked mediterranean sea is the reward after this country became the testing ground of sorts for the pfizer vaccine you know the coffee shops are full and the restaurants are full and everybody that the beaches are full and everybody's outside and everything is back to normal you know everything is irregular moti galam is one of the locals kicking back and enjoying this new normality israel is one of the most vaccinated countries on earth with more than 60 percent of the total population having had both jabs covert was beginning to feel like a thing of the past but then dealt adorned what's the covert situation in israel at the moment now it's like it's like coming back you know we had a war and we changed the government so the coffee there wasn't on the news and now in the last three weeks it's like coming back is it fair to say most people thought covert was just something they didn't have to worry about anymore we thought so we we took off the masks and we thought that yeah the covet is you know history but it's not motty knows this as well as anyone the 57 year old contracted covert despite having both doses of the fisa vaccine were you shocked yes yes i was in shock i was disappointed because i thought that i never get it i have i have the vaccine so the coffee is you know it come it can't come to my house and it came big time i mean three of us got sick monty's experience proves two things you can still catch covert once you're vaccinated but in good news your symptoms are likely to be very mild it's exactly like a flu you have like two three days that you want to go to bed to rest you have no energy but that's all i mean i didn't have any breathing problems i think if god forbid if people will going to hospital and had some problems as in the beginning of the covet before the vaccine that will be a problem but for now i think it's okay israel has seen a spike in case numbers but just like in the uk they haven't translated to a surge in hospitalizations epidemiologist eric feigl ding sees that as the one silver lining in the battle against delta the good news is that the vaccines do work against the delta variant it works pretty well 94 efficacy against hospitalization that is good but it is not a bulletproof vest against you carrying the virus and you spreading it to others and i think that is the problem the common perception is that once enough people get vaccinated that's how we beat the virus but what have we learned from israel that does have a comparatively really high rate of vaccination although they're 60 vaccinated guess what the rest of the 40 that are not fully vaccinated are still spreading the virus and it's leaking through part of the vaccinated population to those people as well having the delta variants spread in your community brings another risk it poses a much greater threat to children so much so that the race is now on in israel to vaccinate kids between the ages of 12 and 16. today it's the turn of 14 year old liam rosenfeld for his first pfizer jab i was ok i'm glad to have it i feel more protected from covert that was okay more than a hundred thousand teens have now been vaccinated in israel as the delta variant runs rampant through schools i think it's like the covet is here to stay you know what i'm saying it's not uh we thought that it's going to disappear but it's not i think he's here to stay and we have to learn to live with it in the new normal covert 19 will not dominate our lives to keep our people safe while reopening progressively we have to test we have to trace we have to vaccinate to everyone in singapore thank you for playing your part in singapore 40 of the population is now fully vaccinated it too is looking to ease restrictions it hopes by the end of the year so you really do feel like this is the final chapter uh well we've been waiting for a vaccine right and now we've got the vaccine and now it's it's been implemented so uh the vaccine was supposed to lead us out of this pandemic so we're not waiting for anything else professor dale fisher is a senior member of the world health organisation based in singapore despite new delta outbreaks singapore is for now unfazed saying being spooked by case numbers alone is a very 2020 way of approaching this situation because what you're seeing is the number of cases increase but not the number of hospitalizations and deaths so it's a different game so this is why singapore is is talking about stopping counting the cases eventually because that will be the future we don't count the number of common cold cases every year or there's another another 10 000 cases of the cold this month no we that's that's pointless because it's it's not a severe illness does there come a time when everyone has had the chance to be fully vaccinated that those who who don't take it up the government just says tough luck you had your chance where reopening yeah look i i think there'll come a time when we have to say to people you either have the covert 19 vaccine or you get covered because it's going to be circulating without all the measures that we've had in place there is one other lesson they've learned in singapore that dale believes australia should be wary of contact tracing becomes more difficult the more people are vaccinated one of the interesting features of delta which is a highly transmissible variant of of covert 19 is that when this is in a vaccinated or partially vaccinated community it's much harder to track because there's so many people with mild or asymptomatic disease if if 40 of your population is vaccinated that you can get spread from asymptomatic to asymptomatic and then then maybe a case will appear sort of in the next suburb and and people will wonder how did it get there but i think this is a twist we didn't really expect so what happens at that point because i'd imagine there will be a lot of vaccinated people who contract the virus are asymptomatic how are we going to know who's then spreading it from person to person to person well you won't you can either do incredible mass testing as we see in china you know literally hundreds of thousands or millions of people getting tested or you live with it what we've learned throughout this pandemic is that this is a virus that's constantly evolving dame sarah gilbert and her team at oxford university managed to cram what normally takes 10 years into 10 months when they created the astrazeneca vaccine the challenge for them now is making sure their vaccine still does the job against whatever mutations have covered come next that is a concern as long as the virus continues to circulate between people there's always a possibility new mutations will arise and be selected and that will have something even more difficult to deal with the the nightmare scenario is a new variant that the vaccine has much lesser effect against so we need to get the vaccine used really widely around the whole world and stop transmission everywhere because if a new mutant arises that escapes vaccine immunity in one part of the world it will travel and get to the rest of us as the rest of the world opens up the bad news for australia of course is that we are woefully under vaccinated if we chose to live with this while the rates of vaccination is at nine percent we will see thousands and thousands of hospitalizations and death part of the problem has been our reluctance to get the jab an aversion to risk has come back to bite us in britain people are so thankful for the astrazeneca vaccine yet here in australia it's become a political football as leaders bicker over its use and safety undermining public confidence i don't want an 18 year old in queensland dying from a clotting illness who if they got covered probably wouldn't die are you somewhat disheartened by i guess the the demonization of the astrazeneca vaccine in some parts of australia well i'm i'm not familiar with exactly what's going on in australia but i think what we're trying to do is is just be honest about what the situation really is um it's a highly effective vaccine i've been vaccinated with it as have many of my colleagues and my family and very happy to be so and i meet many people in the uk who come and tell me that they're so pleased to have the vaccine there is nothing that you can do and that won't have some risk associated with it and sometimes not doing something has risks associated with it as well for now in australia it's a battle to keep the case numbers and variants at bay until our vaccine rollout catches up to our foreign counterparts do you look forward and see your finish line oh yeah this pandemic will end but that ending will be different in different countries singapore believes it'll be at that point before the end of the year covet 19 will be a severe disease potentially in unvaccinated people but when you've got a community that's largely vaccinated you're going to see the cases coming up again but you're not going to see the hospitalizations and deaths so this is what the new normal looks like while parts of australia are currently in lockdown the tables are turned in the uk a packed house at wembley on thursday showing how far other countries have come we are no longer the envy of the world james contos an aussie living in london was among the excitement making the most of his newfound freedom he's hoping in this battle of the vaccine versus the virus it's his team that comes out on top [Music] australia was streets ahead of the uk there for such a long time but do you feel like the uk is now closer to the finish line uh i would have to say yes because um at this stage we've got you know 95 or higher of highly vulnerable people vaccinated everyone who's not been vaccinated either doesn't want to be or can't be [Applause] and i think the the thinking is if we don't open now when are we going to reopen and if not now then what are we actually waiting for [Music] hello i'm tom steinfert thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on ninenow.com.eu as well as the 9now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 531,902

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, vaccine, covid, delta, deaths, spike, australia, cases, contact, tracing, variant, england, UK, wimbledon, dame sarah phillips, astrazeneca, pfizer, science, news

Id: 7NPKlXM9MTg

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021