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Advertisement “We have incredibly low rates of infection in Australia, but without very high vaccine uptake rates, we’re never going to achieve any long-lasting protection, and we’ll just keep doing the same thing over and over again.” There are now growing calls for a cautious easing of border restrictions, with many of Australia’s leading infectious diseases figures suggesting a new, risk-based quarantine system would allow select groups to safely avoid 14-day mandatory quarantine in a hotel. Professor Sharon Lewin, the director of the Doherty Institute, suggested p...

How long before Australia is fully vaccinated against Covid? Josh Nicholas © Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Dave Hunt/EPA It could take years to fully vaccinate Australia against Covid-19 unless there is a significant increase in the vaccination rate, a Guardian Australia analysis shows. The federal government’s rollout strategy aims to administer 45m vaccine doses, not including vaccines for those aged under 18. At the seven-day rolling average of under 36,000, it could take almost 40 months to accomplish. Even a doubling of that rate wouldn’t see the rollout com...

Last modified on Fri 26 Feb 2021 14.02 EST As Australia joins the worldwide Covid-19 vaccine rollout, researchers keep emphasising that while we know the various vaccines in use are strong at preventing hospitalisation and severe disease, it’s less clear how well they stop the virus spreading to other people. While the term ‘Covid-19’ is often used interchangeably to describe both the virus and the disease, it is important to understand the distinction between the two. The virus is Sars-CoV-2, while the disease that can cause symptoms such as coughing and fever is Covid-19. We know vac...

Home isolation and halved timeframes also proposed but medical experts say it is too early to know if vaccines will enable measures to be eased

Last modified on Sat 16 Jan 2021 21.03 EST When Australia’s first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Victoria on 25 January, the virus didn’t even have an official name. The case was a man from Wuhan, China, who flew to Melbourne from Guandong on 19 January. On 26 January, Australia Day, the federal health secretary Prof Brendan Murphy held a press conference, his comments revealing how little was known about the virus that was only reported in Wuhan in December 2019. “We don’t know exactly how long symptoms take to show after a person has been infected, but there is an inc...