The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, says the state government has “always known” people would die as a result of loosening Covid restrictions, after documents surfaced suggesting the government was warned Omicron could lead to a spike in hospitalisations.
On Monday the Guardian revealed that health officials in NSW warned vaccines “may be less effective” against the variant and could lead to an increase in hospitalisations, just days before premier Perrottet announced restrictions would be removed.
The advice, contained in a briefing written by NSW Health’s Covid critical intelligence unit, was published on 10 December, five days before the government scrapped an indoor mask mandate and density limits on venues amid surging Omicron infections.
When asked about the document on Monday, Perrottet said the government had “always known” hospitalisations, case numbers and deaths would rise as a result of the decision to reopen the economy.
“We’ve always known, and that’s the hard reality facing all governments,” he said.
“You’ll always find as we open up society there’ll be an increase in hospitalisations and ICU. That’s the difficult decisions governments face day in, day out.
“We can’t eliminate the virus. There is no country in the world that has been able to eliminate the virus.”
A spokesperson for Perrottet did not respond directly to questions about whether the briefing note was included in NSW Health advice given to the premier prior to easing restrictions on 15 December.
But the premier on Monday defended the decision to ease restrictions as necessary to live with the virus.
“We’ve spoken for a long time about learning to live with the virus [and] I know this is difficult and I know this takes some getting accustomed to as we move through but we’ve always said we’ll tailor our settings for the circumstances we find ourselves in,” he said.
“We’ve always said that as we open up hospitalisations and ICUs will increase, that is the reality of living in a pandemic.”
On 15 December the government announced masks would no longer be mandatory at most locations indoors, scrapped the use of QR code check-ins for low-risk venues and dropped density limits.
It was later forced to reverse that decision on 23 December as cases spiked in the face of the Omicron variant.
But the briefing note of 10 December forewarned that the then-emerging variant was likely to lead to an increase in infections, warning vaccines “may be less effective” and pointing to an increased risk of reinfection.
