Message from the Publisher
A long way to unlock
12 July 2021
A long way to unlock
On Sunday, 112 cases were reported in NSW and among them, 34 still were still moving around in the community.
The Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian has indicated that the lockdown would extend beyond the coming Friday. Victoria has listed NSW as a red zone which in practice forbidden visitors from entering Victoria and have 14 days of quarantine for returning Victorians. On Monday, the NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant supported reducing the time to administer the second dose of AstraZeneca to 6 weeks to allow more NSW residents to be protected.
Three issues now emerge in the burst in NSW. First, the spread of the virus will not disappear in the very near future as, after three weeks of lockdown, the spread is still not yet contained. Second, the lockdown is not effective as quite a proportion of infected cases are still spreading the virus in the community. Third, a greater vaccination rate is seen as the solution as the NSW government now promotes a shorter duration for the second dose of AstraZeneca vaccination and the hint that NSW would seek procurement of vaccine by itself.
The federal government is responsible for providing vaccines and immunization of Australians to fight the battle with Covid. The mass delivery of a million Pfizer vaccines per week from the fourth quarter of the year is now moved forward to next week and this should be done much earlier as indicated by the low rate of full vaccination for Australians. The confusion and debate in providing AstraZeneca to younger Australians are now overshadowed by the uncontained widespread of Covid-19 in NSW. The risk of being unvaccinated is now much higher.
Even the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd upon the request of many business leaders have tried to lobby the chief of Pfizer in the US to speed up the provision of the vaccine to Australians. We do not know what role Kevin Rudd might have played but it is good to see that everybody has tried their best to support Australians in facing this time of hardship.
Raymond Chow
Publisher, Blessing CALD