A Covid-19 modelling expert says there's no need to close the trans-Tasman bubble, but thinks New South Wales needs to impose more restrictions to deal with its community spread of Covid-19.
Photo: AFP
A decision will be made this afternoon about whether the entire Trans-Tasman travel bubble will be closed.
Cabinet convened a special virtual meeting yesterday to discuss the pause. This comes as more than half of Australia is under lockdown due to multiple outbreaks of the Delta variant of Covid-19.
The travel bubble is currently paused for New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.
New South Wales is struggling to control its outbreak of the Delta variant, and yesterday recorded its highest daily number of cases at 124. Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she expected to see cases increase further.
Professor Shaun Hendy says he doesn't think travel with Australia needs to stop completely, as long as there are tight internal restrictions between its states.
However, he says New South Wales will not get on top of the virus under its current lockdown regime.
"They've obviously tightened the restrictions in New South Wales in the last week, but I think they will probably need to tighten further," he told Morning Report.
"It's still not looking restrictive enough for me in New South Wales. The Delta variant is very hard to contain once it's out in the community.
"Although the situation in New South Wales is serious and we have seen spread to south Australia and Victoria, at the moment there are quiet strong travel restrictions in Australia itself. So providing the government feels confident that it can screen returning travellers who might have been in transit through Victoria for example, or in New South Wales during their time in Australia then I don't think it's necessary to restrict travel from other states at this stage.
Hendy said New Zealanders would still need to be circumspect about travel and the risk of being stranded in Australia.
"I'd still be advising people at to travel to Australia unless it's absolutely essential at the moment. The chances of the bubble experiencing further disruptions are very high and that could leave people stuck in Australia for some time."
Modeller Shaun Hendy. Photo: supplied
New Zealand would need to look at tightening its alert levels if the Delta variant reached the community, Hendy said.
"I'd want the government here to react as swiftly as possible if we had a case of Delta here. It is difficult to go to level 4 at the drop of a hat, so it might to necessary to go to level 3, but then very swiftly bring in level 4 requirements. That's the sort of restrictions I think we would need to contain Delta."
"It's certainly time to be looking at our alert-level restrictions and thinking about where they can be tightened."
Listen to Covid-19 modelling expert Professor Shaun Hendy
NSW 'puts bubble at risk'
Meanwhile, head of Melbourne University's school of population and global health, professor Nancy Baxter, told First Up the risk of travel from New South Wales would take a long time to lift and that while that was the case, the trans-Tasman bubble would be at risk.
"I would definitely be putting that bubble on hold, for sure," she said.
"I might maintain a bubble with some regions in Australia but until New South Wales is truly controlled there's a lot of risk.
"It may be that the other states get things under control and then just close their borders to New South Wales entirely, and then possibly you could reinstate the bubble for everything but New South Wales.
"But it's going to be a long time before travel from Sydney is safe for New Zealand."
Baxter said New South Wales had a "lockdown-lite" at the beginning of the latest outbreak, which allowed continued spread of the highly-infectious Delta variant at workplaces.
"For over two weeks the New South Wales really wouldn't declare what was and what wasn't essential work. They left that to the employers.
"Clearly that was not a strategy that worked well.
"Delta is just far more infectious ... it's written different rules" - Professor Nancy Baxter
"What that means is it's going to take a lot longer to get to the get the cases where they want."
On the other hand if there had been no lockdown at all there would now be "thousands" of cases, she said.
"The other thing is that Delta is just far more infectious ... it's written different rules."
People can become infectious much faster after contact, with cases of people transmitting the virus to someone else within 30 hours of coming in contact with it, Baxter said.
"By the time you've found the original case the people they've transmitted it to have already transmitted it to more people and maybe those people have transmitted to people."
"It is just that much harder to keep on top of it. I think that caught Sydney very much by surprise."
New South Wales initially relied on contact-tracing that had served them well in the past, but was not adequate for the Delta variant, she said.