I helped prepare Australia’s pandemic plan and so far it’s unfolding reasonably well
In recent weeks we’ve seen calls to “lock down” Australia to halt the spread of COVID 19. These calls have increased in frequency and stridency after watching the unmitigated human tragedy in countries like Italy, Britain and the United States. If those calling for lock downs are to be believed, Australia is tracking along the same trajectory and it is “inevitable” we’ll face a similar catastrophe.
The risk Australia will confront an epi demic that overwhelms our health system is real. To suggest we are somehow immune from what we’ve seen happen overseas is lu nacy. But equally, Australia’s response has un folded reasonably well to date given the rapidly changing circumstances.
And while you may not have heard much about it, the government does have a plan. I know because I was part of a small team that helped develop that plan.
Australia’s pandemic preparedness plans were in development by the early 2000s but were spurred along by the 2003 SARS out break and emergence of “Bird Flu” in 2005. Australia’s first national exercise – Exercise Cumpston – was then held over four days in 2006 to test the health sector response to a hy pothetical pandemic.
After the first, the Council of Australian Governments agreed to hold a second national exercise to test when a pandemic virus is widespread across Australia. The aim of Exer cise Sustain 08 was to test the non health sec tor response and identify how we could get the country back on its feet.
In contrast to 2006, Sustain 08 was a six month long exercise programme involving three discussion exercises and a fourth “func tional” exercise that tested our national coor dination mechanisms. The discussion exercises involved over 300 experts from mul tiple sectors of Australian society that looked in detail at measures to halt the spread of an infectious disease. The functional exercise cul minated in a teleconference involving COAG leaders, simulating the national cabinet Prime Minister Morrison announced on March 13.
The plan we are seeing enacted now is based on a number of principles. The first of which is, while we have high concentration in our capital cities, Australia’s population is spread across 7.7 million square kilometres. For these reasons, while there is a need to coordinate as much as possible, each jurisdiction needs the flexibility to implement measures based on their specific circumstances. Put simply, it makes lit tle sense to implement nationwide measures that would see Cooktown’s schools close if the ma jority of infected people are in Geelong.
This approach is necessary not only for trying to contain a pandemic but, critically, to also help the country get back on its feet, as it permits measures to be kept in place in one part of the country while other areas resume normal social and economic functioning.
A second key element is that any response needs to be scalable, flexible and proportionate to the threat. Our pandemic plans were de signed to deal with a highly transmissible air borne disease. COVID 19 is not airborne. It is spread by droplet form, which means applying different strategies and some of the more strin gent measures (like a lockdown) that might be warranted in an influenza pandemic may not be necessary now, or at least, not yet.
Of course, not everything was resolved by Exercise Sustain 08. It was agreed, for exam ple, the level and extent of government assis tance to industry, communities, even individuals, would be contingent on who was being affected, what sectors of society were impacted, and what was happening across the world.
It also has to be acknowledged not every thing has gone to plan with the Australian COVID 19 response. Mistakes have been made. There’ll be a lot of time for analyses in the years ahead.
For now, the important thing is that gov ernments acknowledge the mistakes, note the lessons, and ensure they aren’t repeated.
Where successive governments have let Australia down is in ignoring one of the key recommendations of Exercise Sustain 08. Namely, that planning at the national level was highly complex and required continued refine ment. It was further noted the momentum cre ated by holding the two national exercises needed to continue, to ensure we were ade quately prepared.
Since 2008 though, no further national ex ercises have been held. I also suspect the na tional stockpile of personal protective equipment created to help us get through the first months of a pandemic has been subject to a raft of efficiency savings, cut backs and claw backs by a string of governments unfamiliar with how critical that stockpile was to our plans.
This has left us in a position that is less than ideal, where strategies that were already agreed upon in 2008 are being revisited and reconsidered, and where we may not have suf ficient levels of PPE for our frontline health care workers. And let’s be clear: it is our frontline healthcare workers who will bear the brunt of failed policy.
They are our first, last, and until a vaccine becomes available, only line of defence. They must be supported and protected at all costs.
It is easy to become consumed by the panic and anxiety. These are dangerous times, and the world is confronting a global pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen for a century.
Amid the doom and gloom it is important to remember that despite some of the mistakes, our government, your government, remains one of the best prepared in the world. The work put in behind the scenes over the past two decades has got us here.
That preparation can only take us so far though. We need every Australian to join this fight, to do their bit. It is, after all, a fight for our very lives.