University of Melbourne epidemiologist Nancy Baxter has warned that Greater Sydney’s outbreak is about to see “large increases” in case numbers.
Appearing on The Project tonight, Professor Baxter said it was “clear” that Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s “piecemeal approach” when it comes to restrictions hasn’t worked to date.
“They started with one LGA and went to three and five and eight, and now they’re continuing to expand and when you consider it, the way things are progressing elsewhere in Australia, if one of those LGAs was in another state, they’d be locking the entire state down,” she explained.
“So I think the piecemeal approach hasn’t been effective in controlling this outbreak. The outbreak continues to grow. By that, what I mean is that, you know, what is called the effective reproduction number is increasing and so that means even though it is dampened, it is still not under control.
“So, for every one person [infected], about 1.3 people get it. If you have 10 people that have Covid, they’ll give it to 13 people, but when you have 345, it means they’ll give it to 450 people and once you have 450 people, they’re going to give it to 580.
“This is at the point of the curve where it is really going to start to increase. We’re going to be seeing large increases in numbers and once you get numbers like that, it is really difficult to contain it in a space.
“I think that thinking about Sydney-wide restrictions, perhaps NSW-wide – this is popping up everywhere, restrictions to try to really get that reproduction number under one or so the epidemic starts to decline. Some new thinking needs to be injected right now.”

You may also like