COVID-19 in AUSTRALIA

Covid eliminated in six weeks with stage-four lockdown in July, do you agree?

The Covid-19 virus in Victoria could be eliminated if only stage-four lockdown was immediately introduced in the early period of the second wave. Victoria was only in stage-three lockdown from 9 July, when there were 860 active cases of the virus in the state, and it eventually entered stage-four on 2 August, but it was already too late.

According to the MJA analysis, led by a professor of epidemiology at the University of Melbourne’s school of population and global health, Tony Blakely, who previously estimated elimination of the virus in New Zealand to within a week of when it first occurred, and also predicted Australia was likely to experience a significant second wave, found that if Victoria introduced a six-week stage-four lockdown with masks from 9 July, elimination of the virus was possible.

In Blakely and his team’s modelling analysis, curfews or a 5km travel limit were not included, but adding a lockdown of closing all schools, department stores and hardware stores, most people except essential workers working from home, and mask-wearing made mandatory.

Though Victoria had lost such opportunity, Blakely believed there is still a light to reduce community transmission of the virus in Victoria as the numbers of cases have dropped greatly since Wednesday.

On the other side, a professor of epidemiology at La Trobe University, Hassan Vally, said whether Covid could be eliminated or not was just “a great deal of randomness or plain luck”. As concerning different countries’ pandemic situation, no one could predict the development of Covid. He believed that the issue is continuous and surely better models and better analyses could be found in the future.

Only a tiny fraction of Victoria’s lockdown fines paid

Until August 24, police have issued 19,324 fines during Victoria’s lockdown, while only 845 of the fines have been paid. The fines are worth more than $27 million.

Those fines should be paid in 49 days, including an initial 28-day payment period and a further 21-day reminder period. While 18 per cent of the unpaid fines have already reached the ‘notice of final demand’ stage. Enforcement of the fines can include vehicle wheel-clamping, delay of registration, takeover of personal property, and even imprisonment. However, the fines are quite high for ordinary people to pay. So civil liberties groups suggested police to show more mercy with fines, issuing more warnings instead of issuing fines to coronavirus lockdown rules’ breakers. And Fines Victoria responded that there were other payment options for those people who are facing financial difficulties. They could either pay their fine off over an extended period or do unpaid community work.

Besides, vulnerable people raised their concern about their rejected appeal though they have many reasonable excuses. Examples included a man with mental health issues who was fined for riding a bike outside his house and a young woman with a developmental delay who was fined for shopping more than 5 kilometres from her home.