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Why the worsening pandemic overseas is a risk to Australia - ABC News

Why the worsening pandemic overseas is a risk to Australia - ABC News

Why the worsening pandemic overseas is a risk to Australia - ABC News
Oct 28, 2020 3 mins, 59 secs

* Like everyone else in Melbourne I'm so excited to be coming out of lockdown, but after the initial euphoria of the announcement, and no new cases/deaths, I've just been feeling absolutely exhausted?

Norman Swan: And I'm physician and journalist Dr Norman Swan, it's Thursday, 29 October.

Tegan Taylor: So Norman, it's really heartening to see in Australia that our local outbreaks are really coming down to really, really low levels, but the case numbers each day are still high, and that's partly because of returned travellers, so people who are coming back to Australia from other countries, many of which have quite large outbreaks of coronavirus happening there.

And so we are going to see more people coming back who are positive, and we want expanded facilities.

And it requires medical resources so that people who are arriving back who might be sick, and in fact there are people arriving back who are sick, and it's one reason why they want to come back, to get medical care in Australia, and that was the other implication for Royal Prince Alfred, is that some people are coming out of hotel quarantine to come into hospital for surgery and other things, nothing to do with COVID-19, because they were just sick and they needed help and they are entitled to it?

If you're coming from China or Singapore, assuming you're not in transit in Singapore, that you've been in Singapore for a while, obviously New Zealand and other bubble countries, then we maybe have a light touch, you can quarantine at home, we can do ankle bracelets, you allow the authorities to geo-track you on your phone.

But they have all got risk attached to them, and we're just going to have to be really careful because we are all rejoicing at Victoria opening up, and through the fault of nobody, just the pressure of positive cases coming back, we could be at significant risk of some cluster outbreaks.

Ships coming back from overseas which might have had smallpox on them or infections that they didn't fully understand, people went to the quarantine station and stayed there for a while until it was sorted out.

There are army camps, there are other things that you could do where you might be geographically isolated, it's hard for people to get away from them, but you could be looked after humanely in reasonable comfort while you are quarantining, in addition to using home quarantine when it's much safer to do so.

Tegan Taylor: So let's take some questions from the audience, and Grace is writing to us from Melbourne and saying; like everyone else in Melbourne she is so excited to be coming out of lockdown, but after that initial euphoria of the announcement, she has been feeling absolutely exhausted.

Norman Swan: Grace, I think, reading between the lines, your mood is pretty low, and when you say exhausted…I am just assuming this for the moment, so forgive me Grace if I'm entirely wrong here, but reading between the lines, saying you are exhausted, you are really not sure about going out, it's probably a mixture of low mood, maybe even depression and a bit of anxiety?

It's like people who get out of prison and they think it's going to be great, I'm going to get out of prison, and then they are lost when they get out of prison.

And for anybody listening, it's things like are you feeling low, have you lost enjoyment in life.

There is a series of questions that are pretty good at ascertaining whether you're just not enjoying life anymore and you're feeling pretty low and you're not feeling very good about yourself, and that is crossed into clinical depression.

So it's no surprise, Grace, that you and I'm sure many other people are just feeling low, not highly motivated to do stuff you've done before, and a bit anxious as well?

Being immunised so that your nose and your throat and your mouth and your eyes are protected like a physical barrier, almost like an immunological mask over your face so that the virus doesn't get into your body in the first place, it's quite hard to design a vaccine that will do that, not impossible, and it may well be that some of the vaccines that they've got at the moment will do that.

So the assumption they've made is that the virus may…imagine it like a battle where you let the soldiers of the opposite army get into your defence line, but once in the defence line you surround them and attack, so it's like an ambush.

So it's not a bad outcome, but it may well be that you're still infected, just using that analogy of the ambush.

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