Like most parents, Rachael Hitchcock is trying to ride out the Omicron wave without any members of her family catching COVID-19.

Key points:

  • Epidemiologist Adrian Esterman says South Australia has reached its peak in this Omicron wave
  • The SA government is encouraging people to return to the workplace and schools will resume early next month
  • Professor Esterman says there is light at the end of the COVID tunnel with new vaccines being produced

Just before Christmas, the South Australian mother-of-two pulled her almost four-year-old daughter out of childcare in a bid to protect the whole family – especially her three-month-old baby.

“Ninety per cent of our family’s exposure was those three days of her attending childcare and mingling with lots of kids and educators,” she said.

“Educators do what they can but at the end of the day, you don’t know who she’s come into contact with and it could be too late before you know that there’s been an exposure.

“We’re just basically trying to buy as much time as we can until my husband and I can have our boosters and our baby’s just that little bit older, that might make all the difference.”

Ms Hitchcock said her children catching COVID was her biggest concern, but she was also worried for elderly, immunocompromised family members.

She said taking her daughter out of childcare was a hard call to make but being on maternity leave and with her husband working from home, it made sense to keep their daughter home too.

“It’s just taking daily gambles and still living life while trying to balance a healthy lifestyle and not completely secluding yourself, but at the same time still trying to be safe,” she said.

Many South Australians have been in the same situation – on hold, waiting for the Omicron wave to peak in what has been the state’s biggest and deadliest outbreak since the pandemic began.

But now that the state has reportedly reached the peak, what happens next?

Are we definitely at the peak?

SA Premier Steven Marshall has been hesitant to definitively declare the peak has been reached, opting for the phrase “at or about the peak” as case numbers continue to hover in the 3,000s.

But he also says the modellers providing advice to the government believe the state has reached the peak.

Adrian Esterman says people should expect to be wearing masks for some time.(Supplied)

University of South Australia epidemiologist Adrian Esterman agrees, saying case numbers have plateaued. 

“And we’ve gone into a bit of a holding pattern, but that will almost certainly come down.”

One of the important factors plugged into any COVID modelling is the Reff, or effective reproductive number, which shows on average how many people a positive case will pass the disease onto.

Leading into Christmas, the Reff was over 4 – which saw case numbers doubling every three to four days.

“At the moment in South Australia, it’s hovering around 1, and what that means is things certainly aren’t getting any worse, but at the moment they aren’t getting any better,” Professor Esterman said.

He expects the Reff to continue to decrease.

“If you can get it below 1, an outbreak will die out,” he said.

What restrictions will be in place after the peak?

The government has not committed to a date on relaxing restrictions introduced a month ago in response to rising cases.

Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said it was too early to say when restrictions could be eased.

“I’m really, really pleased to see those case numbers plateauing and I hope that we have come off our peak … but we just have to take it a step at a time,” she said.

Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier says it is too soon to say when restrictions can be eased.(ABC News)

Professor Spurrier has said previously that case numbers would depend on the actions of the public. Reduced movement and the following of public health measures, such as wearing masks, contribute to lower case numbers.

Many South Australians have been staying at home, even without being forced to by restrictions.

Adelaide’s CBD has felt the most impact, according to data from Google’s Community Mobility Report.

Visits to retailers in Adelaide’s CBD are down by 45 per cent.(ABC News: Sarah Mullins)

The most recent report, released on Monday, showed visits to CBD retailers and recreational venues such as libraries and cinemas was down 45 per cent, compared to the average around this time in 2020.

Public transport in the CBD was down 57 per cent and visits to CBD workplaces was down 24 per cent.

What will happen when school goes back?

The SA government released more details about its return to school plan on Friday.

Schools will face a hybrid model of remote and face-to-face learning for different year levels for the first two weeks of the term.

The government has also introduced new definitions of “classroom contacts”, where students in a class with a positive case can continue coming to school.

Staff at early learning and childcare centres will undergo rapid antigen test screening three times per week, while teachers at schools will be required to complete seven days of rapid antigen tests if a student in their class tests positive.

The SA government will supply RATs to early education workers.(ABC News: Cason Ho)

Ms Hitchcock’s daughter will start kindergarten in person at the beginning of February and while she is concerned about the extra exposure, she hopes the family has bought enough time to keep themselves protected.

“Things seem to have plateaued a bit now, I was expecting it to get worse than it has in far as daily numbers,” she said.

“But once she starts going to kindy, we have a lot less control over the people she’s coming in contact with … it’s not like we are going to start taking the kids to shopping centres and play cafes and things like that, but we might relax a little bit.”

She is not the only one feeling a bit anxious about the return to school.

Both Professor Spurrier and Professor Esterman say the risk can be reduced by masks, vaccinating as many children as possible, staying home if symptomatic and having good ventilation in classrooms.

But Professor Esterman disagrees with the decision not to use air purifiers in classrooms.

“Air purifiers do a certain amount, but it’s not a panacea, opening doors and windows, as I’ve said before, is much more effective at improving ventilation,” Professor Spurrier said.

But Professor Esterman said not all classrooms had enough natural ventilation and air quality monitoring through having a CO2 monitor in each classroom could identify where air purifiers were needed.

“Most classrooms won’t need them … but there will also be some classrooms where ventilation isn’t good and that’s where air purifiers are helpful,” he said.

Will we get a second wave?

As students return to classrooms and workers start to return to the office over the next month, cases are likely to increase.

But Professor Spurrier said a second wave in the next couple of months was unlikely.

Authorities say students returning to school should not greatly affect case numbers.(Unsplash: Kylie Sikkema)

“If you’ve got fewer people coming together, and that’s in all environments, of course you’d have less infection,” Professor Spurrier said.

“If we all just went home as South Australians and stayed in our homes for 20 days we’d see a dramatic drop in cases.

“But that’s not practical.”

The government says its latest modelling shows its return to school plan will not lead to a significant rise in cases.

“We are expecting and it will be self-evident that there will likely be an uptick in infections in children or cases in children but overall, when you look at the whole population, we are not expecting to get a second wave,” Professor Spurrier said.

Could we see a new variant emerge?

Professor Esterman said for as long as there were COVID-19 cases in the world, new variants would emerge.

“We will be hit by other variants and we don’t know at this stage if they will be milder than Omicron or worse than Omicron,” he said.

However, Professor Esterman said there were reasons to be hopeful – including “much better” treatments for COVID-19 and new vaccines in development.

Researchers in Texas have been working on a new cheap vaccine to make it easy to administer in countries with lower vaccination rates.

And he said researchers were a year or two away from developing a general vaccine to protect people from any variant.

“The way that works is the virus itself is like a little ball with all these spikes coming out of it,” he said.

“And it’s the spikes that have the mutations or most of the mutations but the actual body of it the ball of it hardly ever mutates.

“… So they’re producing vaccines against the body of the virus rather than the spike,” he said.

This means people would probably need an annual shot, much like the flu, but would be protected against any strain.

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