The easing of Covid restrictions in Victoria and New South Wales has been welcomed by industry groups, despite concerns from some epidemiologists that it sends the wrong message at a time daily infections remain high.
From Friday, people in both states who live with Covid-19 cases or are deemed close contacts will no longer have to quarantine for seven days, provided they have no symptoms.
Instead, they will be required to undertake rapid antigen tests, wear masks while indoors, work from home where possible and avoid high-risk settings such as aged care and hospitals.
In Victoria, patrons will no longer need to show proof of their vaccination status to enter hospitality or entertainment venues, and check-in QR codes will no longer be required anywhere.
The state also dropped mask requirements in primary schools, early childhood centres, hospitality, retail and events, bringing it largely in line with NSW and Queensland.
However, Victoria is keeping vaccination mandates for key workers at this stage, while in NSW it has been lifted for all but aged care and disability workers.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, welcomed the announcements, telling reporters in Adelaide: “They are getting back to normal. Hallelujah.”
Industry groups also praised the Victoria and NSW governments, describing the scrapping of the seven-day isolation for household contacts as an enormous relief for businesses severely affected by staff shortages.
“The removal of these isolation requirements in NSW and Victoria are an important step on the path towards living with Covid and are an example for the other jurisdictions to follow,” the Australian Retailers Association CEO, Paul Zahra, said in a statement.
“We’re one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and into the third year of this pandemic. The days of overzealous Covid rules are over.”
The Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive, Paul Guerra, said the announcements put “Covid-19 in the rear-view mirror”. Tim Piper from the Australian Industry Group said it was “the next step in us moving closer to a more ‘Covid normal’ situation”.
The views among epidemiologists, however, were mixed.
Prof Mike Toole from the Burnet Institute said he was disappointed by the announcements, saying daily Covid cases were far too high to justify the changes.
“I don’t think it’s been thought through particularly carefully. I don’t think there’s a clear strategy. I don’t know what our objectives are any more,” he told Guardian Australia.
“The message that it sends on Friday is basically that it’s all over, the pandemic is in the past tense. And it’s clearly not. Anyone who looks at the numbers knows it’s not in the past.”
Toole said Australia currently had one of the world’s highest rates of new cases a day, averaging dozens of deaths daily.
“How can you say we’re entering a new phase of the pandemic when we reported 50,966 new cases [on Wednesday]?” he said.
“People are still living in the belief that Australia somehow avoided the worst of the pandemic, they don’t seem to mind the fact that more than 4,000 people have died from Covid in less than four months this year. That’s twice as many as the combined number of deaths in 2020 and 2021.”
Victoria recorded 14 deaths and 10,628 new infections on Wednesday, while NSW recorded 15 deaths and 15,414 cases. Authorities in both jurisdictions are confident they have passed the peak of the latest Omicron wave.
University of Melbourne epidemiologist Prof Nancy Baxter said the further easing of restrictions would mean the country would not be able to reduce its daily case tally before heading into winter.
“If we relax all restrictions, what we’re going to find is we have a plateau – a high number of cases on an ongoing basis – that leads to a lot of hospitalisation, significant amount of death and a lot of long Covid,” she told ABC News Breakfast.
“That’s what we’re setting ourselves up for by basically wanting to act like it’s 2019.”
Australian National University infectious disease expert Prof Peter Collignon, however, did not expect there to be a huge spike in cases because of the changes, citing high vaccination rates and a large proportion of the population having already had the virus.
“The vast majority of the Australian population have had a booster already with either the vaccine or a natural infection, so I think from the point of view of hospitalisation and death, it won’t be as bad as I was expecting this winter,” he said.
“Will we see cases? Yes, we will. I don’t think we’re going to see another huge peak, though.”
Collignon said Australia has reached a new phase in the pandemic, thanks to vaccination uptake, the milder Omicron variant and the availability of new treatments.
“Our outlook as far as death and serious disease is concerned is much, much better than it was a year-and-a-half ago, which allows us to change how we react to it,” he said.
The head of the epidemiological modelling unit at Monash University, Dr James Trauer, agreed. “These sorts of changes are reasonable and I think the mix is right,” he said, adding that boosting third and fourth vaccine doses should be the primary focus of authorities going forward.
“As restrictions come off, we need to have a positive, proactive response around vaccination to make sure we get high coverage, which I think should be done through a health promotion approach and moving away from vaccine mandates.”
Trauer also urged governments to think about how they will manage the virus in the long-term.
“We’ve got a federal election just around the corner, it’s just the right time to be talking about what sort of sustainable things we can do to invest in public health going forward,” Trauer said.
“I was hoping that the pandemic would be a bit of a wake-up call that we really need to have a health system that’s focused on preventive care, that’s focused on marginalised and vulnerable groups and that doesn’t always run right at capacity, which is what we had before the pandemic.”
The secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Luke Hilakari, urged workplaces to maintain Covid-safe plans to protect their workforce and encouraged any workers with symptoms to stay at home.
“While we might have gone through the peak, we certainly don’t know what’s around the corner, and for some people Covid has had life changing, devastating effects.”
