Grim warning as Covid cases continue to soar: 'A way to go yet'
A leading epidemiologist has warned Covid-19 cases will continue to soar in Australia as the BA.2 subvariant takes hold.
Covid cases are surging across multiple states, with NSW reporting more than 20,000 new infections on Tuesday. Cases in Queensland have jumped 15 per cent in just a week.
And while cases fluctuate day-to-day, epidemiologist Professor Nancy Baxter said when comparing the latest rates to several weeks ago, it was clear the rise has been "substantial".
Prof Baxter, from the University of Melbourne, warned cases were only going to get higher.
"There is going to be another peak, that seems to be clear... It's got a way to go but also we haven't seen what's going to happen with the hospitalisations," she told ABC News Breakfast on Wednesday.
She warned hospitalisations tend to rise two weeks after cases begin to climb, and while the country has high vaccination rates which should protect large parts of the community from severe illness, Prof Baxter said vaccines will begin to wane.
With the booster not experiencing the same success in terms of uptake as the first or second jabs, there are still "significant risks" for many.
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"Over a third of eligible people have not [received a booster vaccine]. So we really need to get that booster number up."
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And Prof Baxter fears cases will only be fuelled by governments' decisions to pull back key restrictions such as household contact isolation and masks in indoor workplaces.
"Instead of actually bringing in some protective measures like mask-wearing, what they're doing instead is relaxing things more which will drive transmission more," she said.
Covid hospitalisations sat above 1,000 for NSW on Tuesday, while daily deaths have largely been in the single digits since late February.
Australia is not the only country where the Omicron subvariant BA.2 is forcing cases up. Daily cases have roughly tripled in the space of four weeks in the UK.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron made up more than a third of all coronavirus variants circulating in the country.
But most countries, with China the glaring exception, are pushing forward with living with the virus. Spain has announced later this month it will scrapping isolation for positive Covid-19 cases.
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