Pandemic response

While Australia avoided the worst of the global pandemic, it has only been because of a combination of geography, luck, and hard border closures. The Federal Government clearly mismanaged Australia’s quarantine program, and completely neglected to plan and execute the vaccination roll-out.

The Government must acknowledge its failings, take immediate steps to mitigate further spread of the virus through effective quarantine facilities and engage with experts from academia, health, and private industry to complete the vaccination roll-out.

The Government must overhaul its pandemic response and engage with Australian experts to focus on key fundamentals of quarantine and vaccination.

A Royal Commission is needed to investigate Australia’s pandemic response.

An Australian Centre for Disease Control is required to manage infectious disease risk in Australia and investing in Australian R&D and vaccine manufacturing capacity is essential.

Our plan

Construct dual-purpose quarantine facilities, that could be rapidly mobilised for international quarantine in the event of a future pandemic
Provide travellers, upon exit from quarantine, with daily COVID-19 home testing kits
Make available more broadly COVID-19 home testing kits, particularly for those undergoing home quarantine
Establish an independent expert committee (not military personnel) that includes social scientists, and public health professionals to develop and advise on the implementation of a mass vaccination plan for Australia

For the medium term we need:

A Royal Commission into Australia’s pandemic response, covering everything from the Ruby Princess to vaccine procurement and distribution
The establishment of an Australian Centre for Disease Control that would be independent of Government and provide evidence-based advice and guidance on health threats to Australia and undertake public health research.
A plan for investing in science and research to future proof Australia’s health
Investment into advanced vaccine manufacturing capability

The health, social and economic impact of COVID-19 in Australia has been significant, with bungled quarantine, inconsistent border management policies, and a failed mass vaccination program.

Scientists had warned for decades that with increased global connectivity, condensed living arrangements, and increased human movement (airplane, train, and cruise ship travel), the likelihood of a novel virus causing a global pandemic was not a matter of if, but when. With climate change also becoming a dominant factor, as well as the rise of antibiotic resistance bacteria, Australia and the world face potentially significant future health challenges if we are not prepared. A Royal Commission will not only identify failures but solutions and successes in our response to ensure we are better prepared for future health challenges.

The Royal Commission should consider:

Construction of onshore quarantine facilities
Establishing an Australian Centre for Disease Control
Investing in local advanced vaccine manufacturing capacity
Increasing and safeguarding the scientific workforce to support rapid response to health challenges (i.e. test development, vaccine development, drug development, care protocols etc), and
Improving preventative health measures through pro-active health education campaigns
Staffing of aged care facilities, and training of care staff to ensure they are prepared to deal with such health challenges

In March 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government announced travel bans to and from Italy, China and Iran. The escalating risk of the pandemic to Australia meant that on March 19th, the Prime Minister announced Level 4 travel restrictions for the entire world, effectively isolating Australia from the rest of the world.

Since then we have seen individual States announcing local border closures in attempts to manage and contain the spread of the virus within Australia. Whilst these decisions have been made based largely on health advice from public health professionals, it has not stopped their politicisation by State and Federal MPs. This political point-scoring not only undermined local efforts to contain virus spread, but it also actively undermined trust in the scientific expertise of Australia.

A centralized and independent Australian Centre for Disease Control (ACDC) could remove the politics from these decisions, applying a central set of guidelines and advice applicable to all States, while still permitting the States autonomy to implement specific measures to their unique situations.

During the early days of the pandemic, the Government was faced with managing the quarantine of Australian’s returning from Wuhan, China. This should have been seen as an opportunity to develop a safe, secure, and humane quarantine system for all future arrivals. Instead, the first ‘quarantine response’ was to send returning travelers from Wuhan, China to Christmas Island, where they were to quarantine for 2 weeks and pay for the associated expenses.

The Government then switched to a combination of home & hotel quarantine arrangements. The standout example of poor early quarantine management was the Ruby Princess debacle. More than 2700 people were allowed to disembark a ship that contained individuals with ‘influenza-like symptoms’, who proceeded to travel to various locations around the country. Since this early failure in border management, every State has reported instances of the virus breaching hotel quarantine facilities.

Hotels were never designed as public health quarantine facilities. In the face of a global pandemic, the Government has relied on hotel staff and part-time security officers to manage potentially infectious returning travelers. Without full-time, highly trained security staff and health professionals working in hotel quarantine, breaches were not a matter of if, but when.

There is a strong argument to be made for the construction of dedicated quarantine facilities around Australia. The likelihood of future pandemic events means that dedicated quarantine facilities would likely have future utility.

In February 2021, the RACGP published their concerns about a lack of standards for hotel quarantine, highlighting factors such as inadequate ventilation, security and testing. An independent ACDC would have power to outline a set of consistent, evidence-based requirements and guidelines for a national quarantine program.

It has been broadly acknowledged that the Federal Government has failed abysmally in both COVID vaccine procurement and delivery of vaccines into arms. Despite having almost 12 months to prepare for their arrival, it has appeared at times as if the Government has had no plan at all.

The original announcement about the procurement of the AstraZeneca vaccine happened in September 2020 and included not just the AstraZeneca vaccine, but also the University of Queensland/CSL vaccine partnership.

It has since emerged that the Government was offered 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in July 2020, for a scheduled delivery in January 2021.For reasons that are unclear, this offer was rejected by the Government.

At times, it has seemed that the Government has been more concerned with trying to spin its messages, than actually deliver real outcomes. It seems the primary reason the Government committed only to the AstraZeneca vaccine was because they could speak to local manufacturing capacity, and support of local jobs, while at the same time taking every photo opportunity to pose with vaccine vials and local scientists.

The mixed messaging from the Government and the media on vaccines has created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and led to slow vaccine uptake and vaccine hesitancy. One only has to refer to comments from the Health Minister, Greg Hunt, who said “we’ve been very clear that, as supply increases later on in the year, there will be enough mRNA vaccines for every Australian”. This sort of comment only resulted in more people deciding to postpone their vaccination until their ‘preferred brand’ became available.

From the outset, we should have procured more than just one vaccine option for the entire country. We should have been manoeuvring to gain access to the Moderna and Pfizer options, and we should also have been seeking access to the Johnson & Johnson single jab vaccine.

The absence of a comprehensive vaccine roll-out plan is perhaps the most astonishing failure in this whole saga. This is even more astonishing when the Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation published a vaccination strategy for COVID-19 in November 2020; however, this was not taken up by anyone in Government. We strongly recommended that Government engage with these experts to transform our approach to vaccination, and rapidly increase vaccination numbers.

One of the major issues has also been our lack of manufacturing capacity for mRNA vaccines, and the lag time in deciding to establish this capacity. Australia should have been investing in research and manufacturing of new vaccine technologies 5 years ago, but the Federal Government has been ad hoc in its approach to supporting medical research and science in Australia. Even in the face of a global pandemic, the Government still hasn’t increased the budget of the National Health and Medical Research Council, which has remained stagnant for more than 10 years. Instead, the Government has thrown what can only be described as token dollars at ‘COVID’ projects, to give the façade of investing in research and development. Questions have been asked about the value of this investment, and perhaps a comprehensive audit should be taken to determine how this money was allocated in the first place. Ultimately, Australia needs to map out a comprehensive plan for investment into science and research. If we are truly the clever country, and want to establish a future economy that takes advantage of advanced manufacturing and biotech industries, then we need to start investing much more to boost our capacity.

ALL vaccines are safe and highly effective at preventing the spread of several deadly diseases.

Given the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic, all public service employees including health services, law enforcement, and teachers, should be fully vaccinated to reduce the risk of disease transmission.

We support the action being taken, viz:

1. Private businesses are free to impose vaccine requirements on employees as part of their occupational health and safety for their employees as they assess them to be necessary.

2. Vaccination is voluntary for all Australians; however, government and businesses are free to impose restrictions on entry to businesses and venues to protect the health and safety of the general public.