Travel hopes dashed as open borders timeline stretches to December
PREMIER Peter Gutwein has warned those impatient for the state to reopen its borders that the Delta variant of Covid-19 will take a grim toll unless every eligible Tasmanian has had a chance to be vaccinated.
The timing and conditions for the state’s border reopening remain unclear.
Digging in around a reopening dependent on double dose vax rates reaching 90 per cent – in defiance of the Prime Minister’s call for easing restrictions at 80 per cent
– Mr Gutwein said it would not happen before December.
He described NSW’s plan to open early as “a recipe for an acceleration of the spread of the virus”.
Mr Gutwein said Tasmania would await modelling on the impact of the Delta variant and watch the larger states reopening over the next two months and see how they fared.
“We do know, and there is no doubt about this, that if we were to relax border restrictions at 80 per cent that Covid would enter Tasmania and it would take off,” he said.
“Some people would get sick, some people would get very sick. And, unfortunately, some Tasmanians would lose their lives.”
Mr Gutwein said based on existing projections, Tasmania would experience 14,900 cases, up to 590 hospital admissions, 97 people in intensive care and almost 100 deaths within six months.
The annual flu death toll, by comparison, is 50 to 100 deaths.
“As we move forward and prepare ourselves for when Delta will one day be here, it’s important we take every step we can to protect ourselves and importantly vaccinate ourselves,” he said.
The government is awaiting modelling from the Garvan Institute on the likely prognosis for a local easing of travel restrictions before making an announcement.
When inbound travel resumed, Mr Gutwein warned that it was likely that it would be for double-vaxxed travellers only, who might be subject to testing before and after travel, and short periods of quarantine.
“To be very clear, Victoria and NSW have
reopening plans because they are currently closed. Their communities are locked down,” he said.
“Now, under their plans while they get some freedoms back at 80 per cent for fully vaccinated people, even at 90 per cent, as foreshadowed by NSW, which they expect to achieve by the first of December, they will only come back to being broadly in line with the restrictions that we have in place here.”
Director of Public Health Mark Veitch would not say what level of deaths would be considered acceptable, but noted modelling was predictive only, not authoritative.
“What we will do when we get information from the Garvan [Institute], is we will look at the information that it provides the projections of what might happen at various [vaccination] rates we will also look at the Doherty Institute information,” Dr Veitch said.