Among hospitals and health workers there was a sense of galvanising and preparing for Covid-19 as the date for the Western Australia border reopening loomed, according to the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Omar Khorshid.
“It takes something to be really on the horizon for you to understand how urgent it is to actually prepare,” Khorshid, a Perth-based orthopaedic surgeon, said. “One of the good things about the 5 February date was it focused the health system’s collective mind on getting ready. You could finally see some action.”
Now the 5 February border reopening has once again been delayed Khorshid is concerned some of that earlier momentum will be lost and may lead to a false sense of security. But with Covid-19 already spreading in the community, Khorshid said it was only a matter of time before health plans would need to swing into action.
On Sunday the state’s health minister, Amber-Jade Sanderson, conceded it would not be possible to eliminate Covid in WA. The premier, Mark McGowan, said the delay in border reopening was to give people more time to get their booster shot.
But Khorshid said borders should be opened to help address critical health worker shortages. At the same time, he wanted public health measures like venue density limits and social distancing to be introduced to slow spread and reduce the health system burden.
“I don’t want to follow the New South Wales model,” Khorshid said, where premier Dominic Perrottet delayed reinstating restrictions even as Omicron cases surged. But simply closing the border, wearing masks, and testing and tracing would not be enough to address ongoing bed and staff shortages and budget cuts in WA, Khorshid said.
He is also worried waiting to reopen borders until winter could see a surge in cases due to immunity from booster shots waning and a more Covid-friendly climate.
“If you wait until 90% of people have been boosted to open borders, then you’re talking winter, when there is also flu going around,” he said. “But I suspect the borders will become irrelevant within a few weeks anyway, because with Omicron a small number of cases becomes a high number very quickly. It makes no sense to be hard on borders, but not introduce public health measures. It’s not logical.”
The director of the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth and infectious diseases expert, Prof Jonathan Carapetis, feels the hospitals where he works are as well-prepared as they can be for Omicron spread.
But he is surprised at the lack of public health advertising campaigns preparing residents of WA – where people have lived more normally than almost anywhere else in the world throughout the pandemic – for Covid-19.
He said the lack of information from government was causing fear and a lot of anxiety among parents, who were worried about their children catching and spreading Covid once they return to school.
“The most frustrating [thing] is, people want to know what the plan for health is, what the plan for schools is, what the plan is for the economy and for families,” Carapetis said.
“They’re not getting that information. There could have been a campaign leading up to February the 5th telling people about how we are getting ready within schools and within health.
“As a paediatrician I deal with a lot of incredibly anxious parents and teachers wondering about the real risk to their kids. Why hasn’t there been a coordinated plan to help people understand the true risks of both opening compared to the true risks of not opening schools, and educating people about all the things that are being done to minimise those risks?”
He believes WA has had more than enough time to prepare such an education campaign and has also had the benefit of learning from elsewhere. He also shares Khorshid’s concern that people may feel a false sense of security knowing the borders are not reopening anytime soon.
“But all the systems have to be focusing on the fact that Covid is here, and we need to be equipped for the long haul,” Carapetis said.
“We have some of the worst Aboriginal vaccination rates in the country. There is an urgent need to get to them. I’d be worried if people now say, ‘this has bought us a little bit of time, we can relax’. We now need to make sure we use every day to the max and most importantly, let people know what the plan to reopen is.”
Khorshid and Carapetis acknowledge the view among health workers is split, with many feeling the health system is ill-prepared for a spike in hospitalisations. The WA secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Mark Olsen, told the ABC delaying border reopening would save “hundreds of lives” and that there was much relief among the majority of union members.
“But if I thought another three months would better prepare the health system, I’d be calling for it,” Khorshid said.
Prof Jaya Dantas, the dean of international health with Curtin University’s faculty of health sciences, said it was important for those in WA to recognise that they were seeing Covid spread at a time when effective treatments are now available, where vaccination rates are among the highest in the world, and when more is known about how to curb spread.
“Public health is not just about one disease, but it is about the broader public and community good,” she said. “That includes peoples’ wellbeing, their mental health, and their capacity to do their jobs. When there’s this uncertainty, and these moving goalposts, it creates problems.
“We need to find a better way of living alongside Covid using all the tools we have now,” Dantas said, “not by just closing borders”.
