“There should not be crowds at the Australian Open, and there should not be crowds or spectators at the SCG test. This flies in the face of all we know about the transmissibility of this virus,” Professor Bowtell said on 3AW Breakfast this morning.
“It is not in the interests of public health, and it’s clearly not in the interests of the young [Victorian] man who’s been infected somewhere along the line, which is very upsetting for him and his family and those who have been put at risk, such as spectators and staff.”
The Victorian man in his 30s tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, having attended the second day of the MCG cricket test and visited Chadstone, one of the state’s major shopping centres, in the days before he was diagnosed.
Professor Bowtell said the United Kingdom was a warning sign of what living with COVID-19 looked like. “We saw in the last day or so, the Prime Minister … shut down the United Kingdom for the third time. They have tried to live with COVID and they have driven themselves over the abyss,” he said.
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A new strain of coronavirus in the UK is believed to be between 50 and 70 per cent more infectious than the initial virus which was found in Wuhan, China. Another strain, believed to have originated in South Africa, is also thought to be more virulent than other types of COVID-19.
Professor Bowtell said the federal government had given out too many exemptions for hotel quarantine to airline staff, diplomats and the “well-connected”, and that vaccination of the Australian population needed to start.
“I plead to people: take it extremely seriously. We do not want this UK variant or South African variant in Australia … what we’ve got to do is get on with the vaccination of our people, before any of these further problems become apparent,” he said.
