In Australia, the zero Covid strategy falters in the face of the Delta variant

The 4:15 p.m. line, it’s your turn, go ahead, one behind the other and respect the physical distancing measures! Shouts a government employee, in an oversized fluorescent orange waistcoat, pointing to the entrance to Sydney Olympic Park, one of the mass vaccination centers established by the State of New South Wales. Immediately, on this Thursday, August 5, dozens of people set out. Barely a few minutes later, everyone receives a text message with a vaccination post number. “They don’t have a lot of doses but at least they’re well organized “, said in smiling Max, a forties relieved to have completed his vaccination course.

Read also Covid-19 in the world: in Australia, half of the population is now re-confined to contain the epidemic

As of Tuesday, August 10, only 23.09% of Australians had received two injections of the Covid-19 vaccine, 44.7% only one. Extremely low rates, resulting from supply problems, which place the island-continent at the back of the pack of developed countries and which will not make it possible to lift, in the short term, the restrictive measures affecting a large part of the population since that the Delta variant was invited to the antipodes, on June 16.

After more than six weeks of confinement, Sydney, the most affected city in Australia, has still not succeeded in stemming the wave which continues to gain in amplitude with, on Tuesday, 356 new cases in the whole of the News -South Wales, the highest figure ever recorded in this state. The challenge is such that the local government is now considering “living with” the virus, in contradiction with the “zero Covid” policy which has so far enabled the country to record less than 1,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. This possible renunciation is not yet official, but it has already been denounced by the leaders of other states and territories as well as by the federal authorities, who do not plan to cross this milestone before at least 70% of the population over 16 years of age has been vaccinated.

Hardened containment measures

“Tending towards zero remains our national approach at present”, hammered, on August 6, Paul Kelly, the Australian director general of health, who, like other officials of the country, expects New South Wales to take more binding measures to extinguish this outbreak. “We need a circuit breaker”, underlined the professor. Among the avenues considered by epidemiologists: the establishment of a curfew, the obligation to wear a mask outdoors throughout the city or even the reduction of the authorized travel perimeter which currently extends up to 10 kilometers. . Options swept aside by the local government, which had already struggled to resolve to confine the whole of its capital, on June 26. A first since May 2020.

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