The pathway out of the pandemic; the harms of alcohol in pregnancy; supporting pregnant women with SUDs; and is low carb always best?
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What is the opening overview of today’s Health Report episode?
This is an ABC podcast.
Hello and welcome to The Health Report with me, Norman Swan.
And me, Tegan Taylor.
Today, just how dangerous are even small amounts of alcohol in pregnancy? Research shows it can set children up for unusual behaviours with alcohol while they're still very young. What help is there out there for women with substance use disorders and their babies and why are some falling through the cracks?
Could a high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet be linked to a healthier life? Well, it depends on what kind of carbs you're talking about.
While New South Wales is still trying to contain COVID cases, the Prime Minister last week outlined a four-stage pathway out of the pandemic, but no clear timeline or goals yet. Singapore is already somewhere between stages two and three in what our plan envisages for next year. They've announced a new strategy to live with the virus, but it requires a layered public health response and, most importantly, continuing their high vaccination rates. Professor Raina McIntyre is head of the Biosecurity Programme and a vaccine expert at the Kirby Institute and the University of New South Wales.
How risky are even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy?
She thinks herd immunity can happen in Australia, but will require vaccinating kids too.
I still believe herd immunity is achievable. We've achieved it for measles, which has a much higher infectiousness, and we've achieved it for polio with very high vaccination rates. With the Delta variant, of course, which is much more contagious, you're going to need higher levels of vaccination. I would say 80% plus probably of the whole population, which means kids have to be part of the plan.
What's your understanding of how Singapore approaches this?
So their approach is number one, to get their vaccination rates really high and protect their population. And then... plan opening up society with the expectation that infection will come in. There may be new other variants that emerge in the future, but that because the population is highly vaccinated, they won't have deaths and hospitalisations to the rate that was seen last year. What
are the issues in terms of opening up the borders to vaccinated people? There seems to be a lot of confusion around that whole story.
So the problem right now is that we don't have enough people vaccinated in the population. And we know that even being fully vaccinated, you can still transmit the infection. There's now real world studies showing that. So we have to kind of hold the line until we get our vaccination rates up. At that point, we can open up, but we need a global system for vaccine passports. And in the long run, that's going to be critical for mobility and travel and so on. And they'll have to be systems in place where different countries recognise the vaccination certificates of other countries. In the European Union right now, for example, they're only accepting for their green card travel approval, only certain vaccines.
And for AstraZeneca, for example, they're only accepting vaccine made in the UK. So I think each other country that's making AstraZeneca has to apply to the European Union to include their version of the vaccine. So right now, at this point in time, someone who's had the Australian-made AstraZeneca won't be able to travel to the EU under that system.
What is the Australian Prime Minister’s four‑stage pathway out of the pandemic?
But is there some transition point where, in terms of coverage in Australia, you can say we're at a safer place for opening up borders?
Yeah, look, I think we've seen opening up in Europe, the US and the UK with vaccination rates, you know, around the 50% mark of two doses. But that's in a context where they've had a lot of disease. So a little bit more disease isn't making a big difference. For us, it will make a big difference because we've had very little. I think, you know, 70% plus of the population, which is why we need to be now making recommendations about Are we going to be vaccinating kids 12 and up? What about kids under 12? Which vaccines are best? And so on.
Now, one of the features of the Singaporean approach is that they do have restrictions in place, and they've got very sophisticated contact tracing, and there are lots and lots of people in quarantine.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the opening overview of today’s Health Report episode?
0:01–1:06
2
How risky are even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy?
1:06–3:21
3
What is the Australian Prime Minister’s four‑stage pathway out of the pandemic?
3:21–5:12
4
How does herd immunity work in Australia and why are children part of the plan?
5:12–8:08
5
What lessons can we learn from Singapore’s layered COVID‑19 response?
8:08–36:43
6
Why are some pregnant women with substance‑use disorders falling through the cracks?
36:43–39:58
Speakers
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