While COVID-19 is ravaging the Northern Hemisphere and driving several European countries back into lockdown, Australia hit an important milestone yesterday recording its first day of zero community transmission in five months:
That’s an enormous achievement and federal health minister, Greg Hunt, was quick to congratulate Australia:
Advice just in from the National Incident Centre – Zero community transmission cases today Australia wide- the 1st national zero community transmission day since June 9. Thankyou to all of our amazing health & public health workers & above all else the Australian people.
— Greg Hunt (@GregHuntMP) November 1, 2020
As shown in the next chart, the overwhelming majority of new COVID-19 cases in Australia are now returning travelers in hotel quarantine:
This highlights the paramount importance of having a robust hotel quarantine system in place to prevent COVID-19 from spreading into the community.
Hotel quarantine failures seeded 99% of Victoria’s destructive second wave, sending Melbourne into a 16-week lockdown and resulting in the death of more than 800 people.
Having a robust hotel quarantine system is, therefore, the nation’s number one defence against the virus and is fundamental to maintaining Australia’s envious status as a COVID-19 safe haven.
Australia’s policy makers, and Victoria in particular, must concentrate their efforts into ensuring that our hotel quarantine systems are robust and based on best practice.
What they must certainly not do is follow the suicidal plan to allow private sector interests to run quarantine schemes to import international students and migrant workers:
Individual corporations could lease entire hotels, and universities could commandeer campus accommodation to quarantine foreign students, under plans being devised to safely and dramatically expand international travel and get the economy rolling.
And with Victoria on top of its coronavirus outbreak and in the midst of reopening its economy, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was hoped the state would soon resume quarantine duties, enabling the thousands of Australians stranded abroad the opportunity to be home by Christmas.
“The next big … game changer in that area will be for Victoria to open up to international arrivals for people to come back,” he said.
…In an interview with The Australian Financial Review, Nev Power, the head of the National COVID-19 Commission Advisory Board, said numerous options were under development to help restart business travel, bring in foreign students and mine workers.
Australians (Victorians in particular) have sacrificed too much to risk throwing it all away to inflate a few vice-chancellor salaries and keep wages crushed.
