While the focus has been on containing ‘hot spots’ of COVID-19 outbreaks, understanding why some areas have few or no cases could point the way to a staged reopening that starts with these areas.
The failure to anticipate the consequence of workers having no paid sick leave is one of the greatest flaws in Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Siouxsie Wiles, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Putting all of Victoria under stage 4 restrictions would give the state its best chance of stopping community transmission, rather than setting it up to play an endless game of COVID-19 whack-a-mole.
Victoria’s closure of child-care services may be necessary, but it will put pressures on parents and likely drive down women’s workforce participation.
Not everyone has a job they can do from home. Mapping the patterns of occupations across Melbourne’s suburbs against COVID-19 cases strongly suggests why some parts of the city are more vulnerable.
The hard lockdowns of whole blocks have been challenging for many residents due to their histories of trauma, their housing conditions and a lack of communication and understanding from authorities.
Victoria recorded 484 new cases on a day when COVID-19 should have been firmly on the decline if the latest lockdown was working. It’s time to contemplate even stricter measures for longer-term gain.
The fines for failing to wear a mask during Melbourne’s lockdown have been criticised as ‘punitive’. But the fact that masks are cheap or free, with huge public health benefits, makes it justifiable.
No single measure in isolation prevents disease transmission. It is a matter of reducing the likelihood and enhancing the capacity of the system to deal with events that occur.
Much of our public housing stock is ageing and substandard. But we can learn from outstanding examples of retrofit projects that have transformed existing blocks into high-quality housing.
The spread of the virus through households creates costs higher than for isolation in hotels when families are large and living at close quarters as in Melbourne’s public housing towers.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne