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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

The country's two largest states, New South Wales and Victoria, now have clear roadmaps out of the pandemic and towards a future where we live with COVID-19.

Those pathways, as well as the national plan, are heavily influenced by modelling conducted by the Doherty Institute, which estimates case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths as the country reopens.

But the Doherty Institute isn’t the only organisation modelling our future. There are other, highly influential, bodies projecting their own numbers.. numbers that contradict the national plan.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton on the models deciding our future… and who we should trust.
It’s Wednesday September 29.

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RUBY:

Rick, can you tell me about why you decided to look into this story?

RICK:

So we're kind of figuring out things as we go, not just in Australia, but around the world when it comes to the Delta variant of Covid-19. And one way that we've decided to figure out what to do is put a little faith in models. But there's so many of them. So, you know, in terms of, you know, how I usually guide my reporting, what is something that is going to have a huge impact on people? This modelling about what happens with Delta hospitalisations, deaths and reopening is actually probably one of the biggest stories going around.

RUBY:

Mm hmm, and one of the major things these models have informed is our national road map out of lockdowns and border restrictions. That work was done by the Doherty Institute.So what have they been saying?

RICK:

So the Doherty Institute, they released their first kind of round of models updated for the Delta variant at the beginning of August.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“Thank you, Prime Minister. And there's a presentation that I believe will be on screen currently…”

RICK:

So that's where we came up with the crucial triggers of 70 percent and 80 percent vaccination coverage of the population aged over 16.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“So we were asked to explore a series of vaccine coverage thresholds between 50 and 80 per cent and simulations basically looked at should an outbreak become uncontrolled in those conditions, what would the consequences be?”

RICK:

The Doherty report modelled what would happen to case numbers, to hospitalisations and deaths if the country eased certain restrictions at different vaccination rates to try and give, you know, not just the Commonwealth, but state and territory governments some data driven input into decision making.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“As we reach 70 and 80 per cent, the need for long, stringent measures across the whole of states or across extended areas, we believe will be substantively reduced.”

RICK:

And initially, what they found in this first round of the report was that vaccinations do almost all of the heavy lifting, particularly once you get up to around 80 per cent. That first model they released in August essentially showed that, you know, there would be minimal need for moderate, medium heavy restrictions, such as stay at home orders. In fact, they would be vanishingly rare at 80%...

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“For different levels of coverage, we were able to reduce transmission through vaccination to the extent that the need for prolonged lockdowns to regain control should be substantially diminished.”

RICK:

But even though that initial report from the Doherty Institute and its partners informed the national roadmap that was signed by the entire national cabinet, it didn't take long for that modelling to be called into question, especially by some state leaders who are much more cautious about reopening than the federal government.

RUBY:

OK, so tell me more about this push back to the Doherty report, Rick. What kinds of hesitations did some state leaders have?

RICK:

Well, the main thing was that the modelling in the report was undertaken before we saw these big outbreaks in New South Wales and Victoria. So already that fundamental assumption is out the window.
But they're also kind of less genuine insights, I think, from some leaders.

Archival tape -- Annastacia Palaszczuk:

“Doherty Institute modelling predicts even with 70 percent of the population vaccinated, 80 people will die each day from Covid once the outbreak reaches six months after it started.”

RICK:

Queensland's Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who has yet to provide a timeline for her own state to reopen was citing the Doherty modelling to suggest that 80 people would die every day if we reopened at 70 per cent.

Archival tape -- Annastacia Palaszczuk:

“That's 2240 who will die each month. Mr Speaker, everyone wants this pandemic to be over.”

RICK:

But it was also the very worst case scenario provided for in the initial Daoudi report. And Palaszczuk was accused of being misleading because she had extrapolated some of those worst case scenarios to make her case in total isolation without any of the context.

Archival tape -- Annastacia Palaszczuk:

“I completely sympathise with those in other states enduring months of lockdown, but my job is to protect the people of this state, which is what we have done since the start of this pandemic and we will continue to do so.”

RICK:

So what this really tells us is that we have what is essentially a political debate over when to reopen or when border closures can end. But politicians on all sides of this debate and citizens, too, I might add, are cherry picking modelling that they think suits their argument to try and, you know, justify their positions.

RUBY:

OK, sure. But it is true that the Doherty Institute's modelling, which is the basis for the national road map, did not factor in these outbreaks that are currently happening in New South Wales and in Victoria. So what do we know about how that changes things?

RICK:

Yeah, no you're 100 percent right. They didn't. So last Monday, the Doherty Institute and its partners released an update to its initial report. And they held a media briefing to provide this kind of new sensitivity analysis, as they call it, of the original modelling.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“And so we undertook a sensitivity analysis where we ceded outbreaks at 70 and 80 per cent with hundreds or thousands of cases and we say hundreds. It was 300 to 1000 and with thousands it was a thousand to four and a half thousand…”

RICK:

This time, looking at the situation in New South Wales and Victoria, they looked at what would happen if the outbreak was in the hundreds or in the thousands of active cases in the community when they begin running the scenario.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“And said if we start with this many cases, do we kind of break the assumptions and overall our conclusions were robust.”

RUBY:

And what did they conclude, Rick, when they looked at an outbreak in the hundreds or in the thousands?

RICK:

They concluded that things didn’t actually change that much. The one key difference and this is key, was that if an area had caseloads in the thousands already, then you probably still needed some restrictions until you hit the 80 per cent vaccination figure rather than even the gradual reopening up at 70 percent.

Archival tape -- Unknown Person 1:

“And that those who are coming into the 70% mark with thousands of infections should aim to keep case numbers as low as possible by continuing to suppress epidemic growth, and we showed how medium restrictions could continue to do that until we got at least to the 80% threshold.”

RICK:

Now, one of the reasons why that changed the scenario in this case for the Doherty model was that it's because contact tracers can't keep up with an outbreak of that size, which means cases continue to run away and your population isn't vaccinated enough to contain them.

RICK:

And at that media briefing, James McCall, who is a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Melbourne, said that what we've seen in New South Wales is vaccines are having their impact. They are bending the curve down.

Archival tape -- James McCall:

“You can see a slow and steady decline in the transmission potential in New South Wales, and that's almost entirely due to the vaccine rollout.”

RICK:

He said it was the primary, the dominant effect on actually getting that outbreak under control or at least seen a suppression in the growth of case numbers and reducing what they call the effective reproduction number of the virus below one, which means we can actually eventually reduce case numbers quite significantly.

Archival tape -- James McCall:

“We're seeing the transmission potential reduce in Victoria as well due to vaccine. It's just a little bit higher for two reasons.”

RICK:

But there's another group of experts who are pretty powerful and influential, especially in Victoria, who disagree with this position and, you know, this battle over modelling and what measures are having, what impact could actually dictate the future of Australia's Covid response.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Rick, we’re talking about the modelling underpinning the plans to reopen in Australia. There’s the Doherty Institute - which has recently revised its advice, but is essentially supplying a roadmap to allow us to live with the virus. And there’s this other group of experts - who are disagreeing with the Doherty institute. So who are they -- and what is their position on how Australia should be responding to the pandemic right now?

RICK:

So aside from the Doherty Institute, the other significant group involved in advising governments right now is the Burnet Institute. Now they're modelling and advice has been used in Victoria to develop that state's road map out of lockdown. And they also were brought in by Gladys Berejiklian in New South Wales to estimate, you know, the outbreak over the coming months in that state.

Now, Burnet is controversial for a couple of reasons. The first is that they're modelling has been very wrong in the past. You know, they were estimating New South Wales in a worst case scenario, would peak with 7000 new cases each and every day. Now, when they were questioned about that recently, their public health lead professor, Mark Stoové, was slammed for saying that the modelling was actually done to influence government policy and encourage public adherence to restrictions. Now, the other reason they've attracted criticism is because of their commitment to trying to eliminate Covid, which has become a very controversial proposition. You know, their director and professor, Brendan Crabb, is a strong proponent of what we call Covid zero.

Archival tape -- Brendan Crabb:

“But the only way to live freely, have a relatively normal life is to be Covid zero.”

RICK:

And their website states very explicitly that one of their key platforms is disease elimination.

Archival tape -- Brendan Crabb:

“And, you know, with what's happening in New South Wales and what's happened in Victoria, what's happening now are really rams that home. If you're not Covid zero prior to high vax, you're in lockdown in one way.”

RICK:

Now, that sounds very reasonable. Obviously, no one wants diseases, but as a result, they've been one of the most vocal voices calling for harsher and longer lockdowns to try and drive cases low. And they don't agree that it's vaccinations that have been the main factor in New South Wales being able to suppress the rate of growth in its outbreak, which is a very strange proposition.

RUBY:

So what do they think is behind the recent drop in case numbers in New South Wales then?

RICK:

Well, rather than vaccines, they say it's tough restrictions in hot spot local government areas in Sydney that were the hardest hit. So in this September 14 document that they authored, which has been criticised online by other modellers and health professionals, the Burnett Institute said that it was curfews and other tough restrictions, such as outdoor exercise limits, that, quote, has worked to halt the rise in cases. In fact, they only attribute vaccines to having a nine per cent effect on suppressing cases. But none of that explains what's happening in Victoria.

Now Victoria went into lockdown as fast as you could possibly go when new cases were identified of this Delta strain. As soon as they find these cases, they go straight into lockdown. The restrictions were already tough. They already had limits on outdoor exercise and travel limits and mandatory mask wearing. And very soon they had the exact same 9pm curfew that New South Wales has had in its 12 LGA hotspots, one of which I live in. And they had them from the beginning of the outbreak, essentially.

Now, although these measures undoubtedly, undoubtedly reduced the number of daily infections, they were unable to stop the outbreak from becoming the fastest growing of any covid cluster in Australian history.

RUBY:

Hm, OK, so, Rick, we have two competing scientific institutes with two different sets of models pointing to very different ways of controlling case numbers in an outbreak. So where does all of this leave us in terms of what to do next and when to reopen safely? Are we essentially going to have to pick a team here?

RICK:

Look, I don't love teams, but you know, what this whole debate suggests is that for all of this discussion over specific lockdown measures like curfews and the harsher things that Victoria adopted, but allegedly New South Wales didn't, it's really hard to tell what worked. In fact, the Burnet Institute, when they were looking at what happened in Victoria's second wave last year, literally said that you can't actually pinpoint a direct effect. But they were doing what we would call kind of a best guess, I guess.

And the one thing we do know for certain, not just from here in Australia, but from around the world in the best scientific journals, the best evidence from a whole range of countries is that vaccines work. They help reduce the spread of the virus and more importantly, they help prevent hospitalisations and death.

You know, the figures we're seeing just in Australia, there are so few fully vaccinated people, not just in hospital compared to unvaccinated people, but in the death statistics.

And it's something I suspect the other states who haven't dealt with a full blown Delta outbreak yet will get to at some point

Whether it's now or early next year, I mean, there's only so long you can stall for time, and I think that's important.
In amongst that, there is a very real discussion that needs to be had about who we are protecting, like there will still be cases, whatever happens, and we need to make sure that the investments, no matter whether you're a Labor government or a Liberal government or something in between the investments in not just the public health system, but the health system more broadly, the ambulance services, that's the stuff that matters because there's there's no way that we're going to avoid having an extra impost on the systems, not just into next year, but for the next five years at least, because this is going to be an endemic virus.

RUBY:

Hmm. Rick, thank you so much for your time.

RICK:

Thanks so much Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

For the first time in months, Victoria has recorded more new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 than New South Wales.

On Tuesday, Victoria recorded 867 new cases and four deaths. More than half of the new cases were in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

New South Wales recorded a total of 863 new cases of the virus and seven deaths.

And Queensland authorities are on high alert after four new cases of Covid-19 were detected in the Brisbane region on Tuesday.

Health officials are particularly concerned about the possible spread of the virus after a truck driver was found to have been infectious in the community for up to eight days.

Some restrictions including mandatory masks have been reintroduced.

The NRL grand final is scheduled to take place this weekend.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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