COVID Complacency Has Health Authorities Worried As Third Omicron Wave Takes Hold

Debate rages once more over mask mandates and work-from-home arrangements as a third Covid wave has Australian health experts worried.

But this week, Victoria's Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas rejected advice from the state's acting Chief Health Officer to mandate mask-wearing in childcare centres, schools, retail, and some hospitality venues.

Instead Ms Thomas said mask wearing indoors and in crowded spaces is still "strongly recommended".

"I made a decision based on the advice that I had received that further mandating masks was not the most effective way to get the message out about the importance of mask wearing," Ms Thomas told reporters on Tuesday.

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It comes as Health Minister Mark Butler admits there is a "level of fatigue about being told what to do".

Butler said the government is keen to keep cases “as low as possible” which is why chief health officers were strongly encouraging mask-wearing in crowded indoor spaces, but the “primary focus” was to keep the number of “severely unwell" people to a minimum.

“Which is why our focus has been on boosters, on that fourth dose being made much more widely available.”

- Mr Butler

But Covid and mask complacency could be putting the most vulnerable Australians at risk, as NSW scraps vaccine mandates for visitors to aged care homes, prompting concerns from experts as we face a spike in Covid cases.

Meanwhile Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has called for a national cabinet meeting to help deal with rising cases.

Ms Palaszczuk on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to convene a meeting "in the next couple of weeks" for a pandemic update from the nation's chief health officer.  

"I have already put out there to the prime minister that it would be good, I think, for national cabinet to get an update from the chief health officer if these cases continue to do this upward trend that we're seeing," Ms Palaszczuk said.

The meeting may go ahead, after Mr Butler's commented on 3AW he has advised chief health officers that they need to "make sure that they calibrate their advice for this third wave in just 2022 in a way that gets the best response and the best behavioural response from our community."

Butler said on Wednesday “there are going to be millions of people infected by Covid in this coming few weeks’ period”.

“We have 250,000 to 300,000 people today who are infected on official data. The real number’s probably twice that, or maybe even more, according to what we understand about this variant.”

- Mr Butler

It comes as the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee revised last week its official advice on reinfection periods from 12 weeks down to just 28 days

in addition, pandemic leave payments, free RATs and telehealth consultations have all been scrapped.

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