An epidemiologist’s ‘hope’ and ‘concern’ about Victoria’s COVID-19 outlook

Victoria has recorded more new COVID-19 cases than on any day previously, and in NSW the daily figure has almost doubled to 11,201, which is also a record.

A leading epidemiologist says it’s the result of people who delayed testing over Christmas coming forward and an increase fuelled by mixing across households over the festive period.

“Hopefully the … case numbers that are being reported are more reflecting Omicron than a Delta rise, but we are seeing Delta numbers come back up again,” Chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, Professor Catherine Bennett, told Shane McInnes, filling in for Neil Mitchell.

“They’ve actually fluctuated in the background. In early December they doubled quite quickly and because the daily case number didn’t go up, people didn’t react.”

Professor Bennett shared her “hope” about the trajectory Omicron will likely take, based on international trends.

“In places like the Netherlands, where we first saw Omicron land outside of Africa, that’s already starting to look like it might have peaked,” she said.

“Sometimes it burns itself out quickly because in the groups where it’s spreading you very quickly run out of susceptible people.

“That’s our hope, that we push through Omicron quite quickly.”

But the epidemiologist also has a concern about how COVID-19 could spread.

“My concern is that it doesn’t replace Delta … and we end up then when the dust clears from Omicron and all the daily case numbers we’re looking back and saying ‘well actually we’re still sitting at our kind of highest hospitalisation numbers’,” she said.

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