Dream team saves state
Health chief’s secret COVID-19 weapon
THE woman who has led Queensland through the once-in-a-century pandemic had a secret adviser during her biggest career challenge – her husband, a respected microbiologist.
The state’s Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young has told how her husband Graeme Nimmo has been the ideal sounding board during the health crisis, as well as having a “lovely meal” ready for her when she arrived home at night.
“He’s the perfect person to be married to when you’ve got a pandemic, or you’re a chief health officer who doesn’t know anything about pathology and infectious diseases,” Dr Young said. “It’s been a great team, purely by accident.”
Professor Nimmo, on preretirement long service leave, was the first person Dr Young called after she emerged in tears from a national hookup of chief health officers on January 18 to discuss what was then a mysterious new coronavirus spreading in China. He was enjoying a weekend away at Mooloolaba, on the Sunshine Coast.
“I rang him up and said: ‘Graeme, you’ve got to come home. Now. I can’t do this. I need you’,” she said. “I was absolutely terrified. I just thought ‘ This is going to be terrible for everyone’.”
That night, after Professor Nimmo returned to Brisbane, the pair discussed what would need to be done should a pandemic eventuate.
“He’s always very, very wise,” she said.
It was Professor Nimmo who encouraged Dr Young to give the chief health officer role “a try” when she was first asked to act in the job in 2005.
“I initially said: ‘ No’,” Dr Young said. “But when I went home and spoke to Graeme about it, he said: ‘ Why not just give it a go?’ So I did.”
Fifteen years later, she’s Australia’s longest-serving chief health officer and the woman many credit with keeping Queensland safe during the pandemic through her swift actions.
“You can’t wax and wane because then no one knows what you’re going to do next,” she said. On January 21, Dr Young was the first chief health officer in Australia to raise concerns publicly about the “novel coronavirus”. Four days later, when Australia’s first case of the virus was recorded in Melbourne, Dr Young activated Queensland’s State Health Emergency Co-ordination Centre, or SHECC.
Asked about when life would begin to return to normality in Queensland, Dr Young said: “We’re pretty normal now.
“I don’t think we’ve got virus circulating in Queensland, which is why we can go to the football, we can live our lives.”
But she warned Queenslanders they would need to remain cautious for some time, particularly with the state’s domestic borders open to all Australians, bar those living in Adelaide.
“We can’t celebrate yet,” Dr Young said.
With COVID-19 unlikely to be eliminated, she continues to urge Queenslanders to avoid shaking hands and to get tested if they develop symptoms.