The government says hotel quarantine is ‘serving Australia very well’. But if you look at the leaks as a proportion of COVID-positive returnees, it’s a different story.
A more coordinated effort by scientists, stakeholders and community members will be required to stop the next deadly virus that’s already circulating in our midst.
You only have to prevent one case, which could have otherwise led to community spread and lockdown, for such a scheme to pay for itself many times over.
The amount of risk from overseas arrivals depends not just on Australia’s vaccination rates, but also on the particular circumstances of the country from which people are travelling.
The US lags in testing coronavirus samples from COVID-19 patients, which can help track the spread of the virus and the emergence of new variants. But labs are ramping up this crucial surveillance.
The pandemic will not end for anyone, anywhere until it is controlled in every country. Tanzania’s approach will make it that much harder for normality to return.
It could easily be another 12 months until Australians are fully vaccinated. While we’ve had great success fending off the coronavirus, our leaders need to work even more closely to prevail this year.
Ten years ago, we feared Tasmanian devils would be wiped out by a bizarre infectious facial cancer transmitted by biting. But new genetic analysis shows they are evolving to live with the disease.
If you’ve tested positive for COVID-19, a public health officer will call you to interview you. It can be confronting – but it’s important to answer the contact tracer’s questions as best you can.
As the world waits for vaccines against COVID-19, testing wastewater can give communities and smaller locales, such as school districts, valuable signals about infections trends.
If nothing is done to reduce university-based Covid-19 infections, each infected student is likely to infect one other person in their household during the winter holidays.
The Great Barrington Declaration’s advocacy for naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 amounts to a global chickenpox party: naive and dangerous.
As ready as you are to be done with COVID-19, it’s not going anywhere soon. A historian of disease describes how once a pathogen emerges, it’s usually here to stay.
The focus, for some time, has been on new daily case numbers. But what if we are looking at the wrong figure? We should focus on the average number of cases “under investigation” over the last 14 days.
Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne