H Health
Dr Rod Pearce
Winning the COVID-19 fight – and halting the flu OUR SUCCESS Social distancing has produced one of the best results possible for Australia and stopped our influenza season. We have had low rates of spread, while specific outbreaks of coronavirus have occurred on cruise ships and in meatworks. What has stopped the spread in Australia seems to have been our ability to stay away from each other with social distancing, handwashing, and cleaning of surfaces which might have the virus. Up until we introduced these practices, the influenza season was set to be worse than last year, starting early and threatening to be more lethal.
HOW WE COMPARE Australia has a population of about 25 million and has a total death rate from coronavirus (SARS CoV-2 causing
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COVID-19) of 102. This amounts to slightly more than one death per day. The USA has a death rate of more than 1,000 every day (population 13 times more than Australia). If the USA had the same death rate as Australia, it would be 15 deaths per day.
THE CHALLENGE No human in the world will have any built-in defence. COVID-19 is a new (novel) virus. There is no stopping the virus that spreads to one human after another. It grows with no real opposition and spreads to another person. When Australia set out to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus, the hope was to slow the spread from person to person. Because we only had 2,000 intensive care beds, we hoped there would never be more than 2,000 people at any one time in hospital.
Police Journal
WHERE IT STARTED The coronavirus has been known about for years but this mutation started circulating in 2019. The latest international studies suggest a mutation similar to the present one might have been around in September 2019. The specific mutation, however, seems to have occurred in China last December. Sick animals in live markets spread the virus because they are still alive. So those markets are thought to be the biggest cause of these mutations.
Change of Address The Police Association of South Australia needs your change-of-address details. If you have moved, in either the recent or distant past, please let the association know your new address. Its office does not receive notification of changed addresses by any other means.
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The USA has a death rate of more than 1,000 every day (population 13 times more than Australia). If the USA had the same death rate as Australia, it would be 15 deaths per day.
Part of the plan was to increase the number of intensive care beds. The expectation was to have more ventilators and Australia increase its capacity and intensive care beds to around 4,000. We did not have treatment to cure the infection so the only way to look after people was to try to keep them alive on ventilators, in induced comas, and lying in intensive care beds, until their bodies recovered or they died. We saw a similar situation in 2009 with the influenza pandemic, except we had drugs to kill the flu virus (antivirals). We just about used all our intensive care beds then, and our life-support services were stretched to the limit. We were down to our last dozen spare life-support machines.
The association will need your new address, full name, ID number, telephone numbers (home, work and/or mobile). Members can e-mail these details to the association on pasa@pasa.asn.au or send them by letter through dispatch (168).
