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Did Our Researchers Examine Victoria's Winning Covid-busting Strategy?

26th February 2021

Labour Shadow Health Minister lodges PQ asking Scot Gov 'did our researchers examine Victoria's winning Covid-busting strategy?'

HIGHLANDS & Islands MSP David Stewart, who is Labour's Shadow Health Minister, lodged a Parliamentary Question on Thursday 25th February asking the Scottish Government whether its researchers had looked at the experience of Victoria in Australia, which succeeding in slashing Covid rates to emerge into a virus-free country.

It follows Stewart's questions to leading New Zealand professor Michael Baker at today's virtual sitting of Holyrood's Covid Committee.

The Professor of Public Health at New Zealand’s University of Otago, told Mr Stewart Victoria, for a period, had higher rates of Covid that the UK.

It won its battle against the virus because it was driven by modelling "which showed that it would work".

Mr Stewart said it was stimulating insight and well-worth exploring.

He said: "Professor Baker told the committee that in Victoria, they were beginning to lose all hope. They were beginning to think the pandemic explosion over there might be an unrecoverable situation, but they did succeed in beating the virus."

Mr Stewart went on: "Here is a country which has provided a model for a return from quite an intense pandemic wave. They had a border breach and it resulted in several thousands of cases and 800 deaths. This led to a prolonged lockdown for about eight weeks which then allowed it to emerge virus free.

"I think it would be very interesting to know the extent to which our own researchers here in Scotland have looked at this model."

Mr Stewart said he was pleased that the questions he raised during the first half of today’s virtual meeting gave rise to illuminating debate.

Sharing her insight from the point of view of Hong Kong, Emeritus Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong Sian Griffiths, said the population was building on the experience of SARS.

She said it was also having to do “ambush-style lockdowns" in small areas, and their understanding of the live cases was rich.

“They know they have 40 cases at the moment. They know that 25 are from the British strain. They know huge amounts about those cases. Everybody who enters has to go to hotel quarantine for three weeks. If you are, as a country, going to drive for that strict policy, then you have to accept that, and that is something which I think we really haven’t got in place.

“And the question is whether we do now need to have it in place, particularly as we are now starting to lift lockdown.”

University of Edinburgh’s Chair of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Professor Mark Woolhouse, said New Zealand had earned its place as “one of the best places in the world” due to fast actions the UK would have done well to follow.

By the time New Zealand entered lockdown last March, “thousands of cases had been brought in to the UK from France, Italy and Spain”.

“It is too late”, he said, for Scotland or the UK to try to eliminate Covid-19 “in the same way that New Zealand has done”.

“We missed our chance to be like New Zealand. It’s far too late. The game changer, possibly, is the vaccines and whether we can achieve the herd immunity threshold, but there’s no way now that Scotland can get to where New Zealand is now.”