Aussie epidemiologist warns against opening borders

One of Australia’s leading epidemiologists has broken down in detail what he believes could happen when the country opens its doors to the rest of the world — concluding that they’re a “tinderbox” that could “blow up” at any moment.

Tony Blakely, a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne, looked at the UK as an example, and went into the level of risk associated with allowing travel between the two nations.

In a piece for The Conversation , he said that although the UK appears to have brought its level of infection down, the level of risk it poses to Australia, if international travel were to resume, would be around 1000 times higher than the risk in China and other East Asian countries.

He took the assumption that cases will rise again in the UK as restrictions there ease — and that would mean, hypothetically, that 0.5 per cent of British people are infected and unaware of it.

Under that scenario, if we let 10,000 Brits come to Australia each month, that would mean roughly 50 infected people arriving per month.

The UK has been successful in its inoculation drive, and Professor Blakely said that vaccinations, based on the data we currently have, could reduce the risk of unwittingly carrying the virus by 80 per cent.

In his scenario, that means we would have five infected Brits arriving here per month.

Importantly, he said, the vaccine also reduces both the duration of the disease and its infectiousness — offering up to a 75 per cent reduction in the reproductive rate of the virus — meaning our remaining five infected Brits are less infectious.

There were also additional measures we could take at our end like home quarantine with “technology like ankle bracelets, GPS tracking on travellers’ phones to ensure they stay home”, Professor Blakely added.

With extra measures like these, which he believes would stop 80 per cent of infected people getting out and about in Australia while infectious, we would be down to just one infected Brit arriving here each month from the 10,000 we started with.

“Given they are also vaccinated, they’re less likely to pass on the infection,” he said. “And this risk can be reduced further still by ensuring they’re wearing a mask — although if they ‘breached’ home quarantine rules they may not be likely to wear a mask.”

Even with all these measures and hypothetically just one infected person slipping through all the cracks, Professor Blakely said Australia is a “tinderbox”. “Keep in mind the above example assumes we’re only allowing travellers from one country too,” he said. “More countries means more travellers means more risk — although as above, the risk varies based on the infection rate in the origin country.

“Until most adults in Australia are vaccinated, any loosening up of how we respond to the virus incursion is unwise.”

As the two-way transtasman bubble, between Australia and New Zealand, opened this week, the Morrison Government was looking at expanding the arrangements to other nations.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Singapore could be the first destination outside of New Zealand to be included in the bubble, as immigration and health authorities look to lift restrictions to the southeast Asian nation within months.

— news.com.au