2021-06-05 05:05:26 GMT2021-06-05 13:05:26(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
CANBERRA, June 5 (Xinhua) Australia s early response to the coronavirus pandemic prevented lots of deaths and billions of dollars in economic damage, a report has found.
In a study published on Saturday, researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Melbourne modeled three different scenarios from Australia s first wave of COVID-19 infections.
They estimated the cost of the eight-week lockdown adopted across most of the country from March 2020 at 52 billion Australian dollars (40.2 billion U.S. dollars) - 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The costs of a much-delayed lockdown were many times greater and included a much greater loss of life, co-author Quentin Grafton from ANU s Crawford School of Public Policy said in a media release.
In an opinion piece on
Policy Forum, economist and modeller Professor Quentin Grafton of Australian National University, along with other experts including epidemiologist and biostatistician Dr Zoë Hyde of the University of Western Australia, put forward four changes they believe are necessary for Australia s vaccination program. With the emergence of more transmissible new variants, Australia s current COVID-19 vaccination strategy doesn t make sense from either a public health or an economic perspective, they write. It must change or Australia risks a future epidemic and/or very large costs from lockdowns when its international border reopens. They believe Australia needs to do four things.
Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy must change
10 May 2021
Australia can only achieve herd immunity from COVID-19 if it changes its vaccine strategy, Quentin Grafton, Zoë Hyde, Tom Kompas, and John Parslow write.
The world has now reached the grim milestone of about 160 million total confirmed cases of COVID-19. More than 20 million cases have been reported by India, which has been devastated by a second wave driven by the premature relaxation of public health measures and more transmissible variants of the virus.
Even some countries with high vaccination rates haven’t been spared. Chile is battling a new wave of infections despite more than one third of its population being fully vaccinated, mostly with CoronaVac.
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As the long pandemic year drew to an end, and people started stringing up lights and decorating Christmas trees, Australians could be forgiven a small glimmer of hope that the worst of COVID-19 was behind us.
By mid-December, the country had secured more vaccine doses per person than any nation other than Canada. Early data from clinical trials suggested we’d nailed our four vaccine picks.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison receives his second Pfizer vaccination at Castle Hill Medical Centre in March.
Credit:Edwina Pickles
“There are no guarantees that these vaccines will prove successful, however our strategy puts Australia at the front of the queue.”
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