Coronavirus: Anthony Fauci praises Australia response, lockdowns
NATASHA ROBINSON - MARCH 10, 2021
America’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci has praised Australia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as he pledged to closely co-operate with Australia to stamp out the virus in the Pacific.
In an online conversation with Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly hosted by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr Fauci said American had never managed to lock down as effectively as Australia had, and so had lost control of the virus.
“If you look at the monitoring of how well we locked down, we never really locked down completely,” Dr Fauci said. “We had a terrible economic impact, but we never really locked down as well or as completely as Australia did.
“And I think a combination of the other things that Australia did effectively really led to the fact that they’ve done really quite well when you compare Australia to other countries in the world.”
Dr Fauci said the US was facing a major issue with the spread of multiple variants of COVID-19, including the UK and SA strains but also local New York and California strains.
“Luckily what we’re seeing is that luckily for us, the vaccines that are being distributed do very well against 117 (the UK strain). We’re trying to find out now what the impact of the home-grown variants is with regard to monoclonal antibodies and vaccines.
“So here is the challenge. Are we going to chase each variant in an almost whack-a-mole way, or are we going to try and get a vaccine that has a good degree of cross-protection against several strains and get the level of virus so low that we don’t really have an outbreak proportion.
This may require coming back intermittently and boosting either against a prevalent wildtype or against the prevalent variant. And in that regard, both strategies are being pursued in the United States.
“For example, Pfizer is planning on giving a boost of wildtype because we know of the good cross-protection for example against 117. We are working with Moderna to develop a South African isolate specific vaccine boost that might be able to protect against that.”
“Bottom line is we really cannot predict very accurately what’s going to happen on a seasonal basis, but the best thing we can do is get as much control over the existing replication and dynamics of the virus.”
Professor Kelly said during the conversation that as Australia’s vaccination program continues and the country starts to open up, people will need to adjust to the fact that there will be rising numbers of cases.
“In many ways we can only go one way with this which is to have more cases, and as we start to open up that will be an issue,” Professor Kelly said. “We will have to have a conversation with the Australian public about tolerance of outbreaks because they will be inevitable.”
Professor Kelly revealed that Australia has recorded 140 cases of the UK strain and 25 of the SA strain, mostly in hotel quarantine. “It’s starting to become the largest proportion of the few cases that we’ve had but mostly they’ve remained in hotel quarantine,” he said.
The two chief health advisers also discussed vaccine hesitancy, with Dr Fauci saying that the desire to avoid further constraints on day to day life would be a major factor in driving people to get the vaccine and combating vaccine hesitancy.
Dr Fauci said that Australia was one of the US’s strongest research partners and the two countries were expecting to work together to stamp our COVID-19 in the Pacific.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/coronavirus-anthony-fauci-praises-australia-response-lockdowns/news-story/38c451fb4874f8b58c110daef0d936ac