Tasmania hasn’t had an active case of COVID-19 in the community since May 6 last year.
While the virus runs rampant through the country’s biggest population centres, Tasmania’s coronavirus-free count has quietly ticked over the 400-day mark.
But how has the island state achieved this? Has Tasmania remained coronavirus-free for so long due to good luck, or good management?
Experts said it’s a mix of both.
Health department secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said Tasmania learnt early lessons from the March 2020 outbreak in the state’s north-west, the worst outbreak in the country at the time.
That emergency forced the closure of the north-west’s regional and private hospitals, and road blocks were installed at Burnie to isolate the region. There were also strict border entry and quarantine requirements.
Ms Morgan-Wicks is quick to point out that the virus-free streak can be broken at any time. She said the key to keeping COVID-19 out is to continue hygiene and distancing measures, as well as adding a few new ones in, such as the mandatory use of the Check in Tas app for contact-tracing purposes.
And of course, luck helps too.
Is it just because Tasmania has a giant moat?
Norman Swan, the host of the ABC’s Health Report and co-host of the Coronacast podcast, said Tasmania’s geographic location was a major factor in its low case numbers.
Dr Swan added it was good fortune that Tasmania has a small population and that the state had mostly avoided having international travellers in hotel quarantine.
“If you don’t have much virus or any virus coming in at all then you don’t have infection, and if you have a very active control mechanism after that then you’re in a sweet spot.”
Nicola Stephens, an associate professor of public health at the University of Tasmania, joined the state’s health department’s COVID-19 emergency response team when the pandemic hit.
Dr Stephens said while the Bass Strait defence had helped a great deal, on its own it had not stopped community transmission of the virus.
“It’s the systems that we’ve been able to build up since early last year that are really standing up now,” Dr Stephens said.
Deakin University’s chair of epidemiology Dr Catherine Bennett gives a fair amount of credit to the state’s prevention measures for preventing infections in the state.
What steps is Tasmania taking to keep the virus out?
Experts said the answer was a combination of border closures, testing, prompt vaccination, quarantining certain returned travellers and symptomatic people, and requiring people to log their visits to venues using the Check in Tas app.
To date more than 200,000 Tasmanians have received their first dose of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine, with 93,000 people now fully vaccinated.
“I’m wanting to see the numbers over 20,000 in every single week leading up to Christmas, so we have that best chance of getting all Tasmanians at least that first dose of vaccine,” Ms Morgan-Wicks told ABC Hobart on Tuesday.
Tasmanian health department statistics show there’s more than 1,800 people in home quarantine as of July 27, and 109 in hotel quarantine across the state.
More than 11,000 people have been placed in quarantine hotels since the outbreak began last March.
Tasmania Police have not warned or arrested anyone for failing to comply with home quarantine directions for at least five months, while 2,988 checks were conducted in June to make sure people were doing as they’re told.
As well as physical checks, police use mobile location data to make sure people are in their designated address.
There’s also been 287,912 COVID-19 tests completed since the pandemic began, with more than 1,000 received a day over the past week.
On Monday, the State Government celebrated another milestone, more than 30,000 businesses have registered to use the Check in Tas QR code.
But things are also changing all the time.
The state recently required returned travellers from Victoria and South Australia to wear masks, and on Monday capped the attendance at this weekend’s AFL matches in Hobart and Launceston and made them wear masks.
Should we be wearing masks in public?
Ms Morgan-Wicks said all requirements are under constant review and evaluation. She said the use of face masks, as well as public gathering restrictions have been discussed recently due to the “very grave concerns that we hold in relation to New South Wales”.
Dr Swan said there was no right or wrong answer about wearing face masks when there’s no coronavirus in the community, but added persuading the public can be tough.
“I think it’s very hard when there’s no virus in the community to get people to do things like wear masks and change their behaviour because they can’t see the reason,” he said.
Are Tasmanians getting complacent?
Dr Swan said Tasmanians absolutely were becoming complacent.
“What the research shows is that states that haven’t had the virus for a long time have returned to normal behaviour, and normal behaviour means that your social distancing largely disappears and people are mixing,” he said.
He argued that complacency meant there was a bigger onus on governments to remain vigilant, and then to fire up citizens into action if there is an outbreak,
Ms Morgan-Wicks said the Check in Tas app was a visual reminder to all Tasmanians that complacency isn’t going to cut it.
Dr Stephens said there might be some creeping complacency in the state, but added she was confident people would step up their public health measures if and when they need to.
How many cases has Tasmania had?
There have been 232 cases in the state and 13 deaths.
The most recent case was in May last year, but three people who travelled from India on a repatriation flight tested positive to the virus while in hotel quarantine in December.
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