What’s the point of a three-day lockdown?
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Why did Greater Brisbane implement a three‑day lockdown after a single COVID case?
This is an ABC podcast. Hello, this is Corona Cast, a daily podcast all about the coronavirus. I'm Health Reporter Tegan Taylor.
And I'm physician and journalist Doctor Norman Swan. It's Tuesday, the twelfth of January. Happy New Year to everybody, and because you're listening to this, you know we're back.
We're back a bit earlier than we said we would be, partly bec well, mostly, definitely, because things are not as smooth sailing as we hoped that they would be in the early weeks of twenty twenty one.
Yeah, and a lot of your questions are coming in, so we thought we'd just get back early and help out.
So keen listeners of the show know that I am based in Greater Brisbane and last night we came out of a three day lockdown. So Norman, can we talk a bit about why a three day lockdown when we know that the incubation period for this virus is sort of fourteen days ish?
No, it's a good question, and we've had a few questions along those lines about what was the logic for it. I think it was really to give Queensland a chance to see what was happening there, the contact tracers to get organized, and actually just to put a pause on community transmission. And I suspect what was in their minds was that this might not have been a three-day lockdown, that it might actually have ended up being a seven to ten-day lockdown. Lockdown just to fit in maybe with the first incubation period. But luckily there haven't been any cases, so they're in good shape and able to lift it.
Was the three‑day lockdown an over‑reaction or a necessary early‑intervention?
Which in a sense is what happened, not in a sense, it's the same thing that happened in South Australia, just get in quickly, see what's going on, and yeah, it is a bit disruptive, no question. It was over a weekend, which does minimize that, which is fortunate. But uh they know where they're standing and they've got zero cases and they can lift off and just see what happens.
Some commentators uh say that uh d a lockdown is too heavy handed, especially when in this case in Brisbane, there was only one confirmed case, a woman who worked at the quarantine hotel. Are lockdowns too heavy handed? Is it catastrophizing to just shut an entire well five different local government areas down just because of one case?
Well, you know, that's a matter of debate. Certainly, you know, in the Twitter sphere there's criticism and there was an editorial not an editorial but an op ed the other day suggesting that it was all over catastrophized. And the principle here all along has been you go in hard, fast and early and then just get things under control, see where you stand. And yes, there's no question that it's disruptive. Mind you At this time of year when businesses are not fully back, it's much less disruptive than it was, although it does in Queensland affect the tourism industry. There's no question that people are inconvenienced by it. I mean, this is not something that comes out of thin air. We're not offering our own opinions here.
How do experts assess the risk of the UK (B.1.1.7) strain compared to earlier variants?
There are eminent epidemiologists at the Burnett Institute who've managed pandemics before, non influenza pandemics, and others. Queensland, South Australia have done it. And I know that from contact with at a high level with Victoria that they were looking askance at New South Wales, even before they imported cases from New South Wales, that New South Wales wasn't doing enough. And you don't know whether in New South Wales, I mean they're doing pretty well, but you don't know whether in fact they'd be at zero cases now if they'd gone for a quick, sharp lockdown. We'll never know the answer to that, or whether we'd have fewer cases. If they'd gone to mandatory masking earlier than that.
One of the things that is the justification for this lockdown that happened in Greater Brisbane was the fact that the woman who had it had this UK strain of the virus which has been widely publicized as being more infectious than the sort of original coronavirus strain. How worried should we be about this UK strain?
If we go back to what we know about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it is infectious, left to its own devices in its previous variants.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did Greater Brisbane implement a three‑day lockdown after a single COVID case?
0:02–1:26
2
Was the three‑day lockdown an over‑reaction or a necessary early‑intervention?
1:26–2:46
3
How do experts assess the risk of the UK (B.1.1.7) strain compared to earlier variants?
2:46–4:10
4
Is a three‑day lockdown long enough to capture the virus’s incubation period?
4:10–5:10
5
What impact did the lockdown have on businesses, tourism and community testing?
5:10–6:31
6
How should masks be worn to effectively block COVID‑19 transmission?
6:31–7:44
7
Why should we stop using geographic names for variants and use scientific codes instead?
7:44–9:08
8
What are the next steps for monitoring COVID‑19 outbreaks in Sydney and elsewhere?
9:08–10:12