Hotel quarantine (bottom right) won’t stop the spread of the Omicron variant. Pictures (clockwise from top left): Deutche Welle, Daily Mail, The Age, ABC.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the pub.”

Those old enough to remember the sequel to Jaws will get that reference, which carries an ominous real-life significance now that the Omicron COVID-19 variant is upon us. Except that, like the shark in Jaws 2, Omicron is even worse: perhaps the mother of all COVID-19s.

Global data agency GISAID estimates that the spread of Omicron will be much faster than the virulent Delta strain which tore through south eastern Australia this year (see graph above). The variant has more than double the mutations on Delta’s spike protein – the key used by the virus to invade our body’s cells – meaning those vaccine jabs most of us had this year may no longer be effective.

Australia has imposed travel bans and restrictions on parts of Africa where Omicron originated, but the strain is already here, with urgent testing revealing two COVID-positive international flight passengers who arrived in Sydney on Saturday night have Omicron.

Still think the whole “liberty or death” thing’s a good idea now that Omicron’s upon us, COVID sceptics? The fewer than 5000 who turned up to your “Millions March” in Melbourne on a sunny Saturday suggests reality has rained on your parade.

Far from ushering in a further easing of COVID-19 restrictions, December may see stricter rules, initially around supervised quarantine but with much more to come in the likely event Omicron gets into the community. “We’re moving into an era of permanent quarantine and protective countermeasures, not just vaccines,” journalist and author Quentin Dempster wrote.

This promises to put even more of a strain on what was already shown in 2020-21 to be an inadequate quarantine system, often involving hotels. Several times over this period, less transmissible COVID-19 variants jumped from hotels to the world outside, forcing millions of residents in cities across Australia into snap lockdowns.

With the ultra-transmissible Omicron upon us, moving quarantine out of hotels and built-up areas is an imperative. “It’s well and truly time to move quarantine to remote locations, to reduce the risk of transmission into dense urban areas,” said Adrian Esterman, an expert in biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia.

Assuming the threat of Omicron obliges us to again limit international arrivals, Australia is still likely to receive around 10,000 people each fortnight (it rarely went far below that number during the very worst of the pandemic so far). Given Omicron’s extreme transmissibility, and the likelihood we bring back a fortnight of supervised quarantine for international visitors, all of those 10,000-odd will need to be isolated, not in hotels but in purpose-built remote facilities.

That’s 10,000 purpose-built beds we’ll need, pretty well constantly. As things stand, our only dedicated quarantine facility at Howard Springs, near Darwin, holds just 2000 international visitors.
It doesn’t add up, does it?


Photo: Sydney Morning Herald. Insets: Action News Now (top), Channel 9.

Already, our quarantine system has been tested by a Qatar Airways flight, which arrived in Sydney on Saturday night. Fourteen of the passengers are from the nine southern African countries affected by Omicron.

PLEASE HELP US CONTINUE TO THRIVE BY BECOMING AN OFFICIAL FOOTYOLOGY PATRON. JUST CLICK THIS LINK.

While the two aforementioned Omicron-positive travellers on this flight have been sent to dedicated facilities, the other 260 passengers and crew are regarded as a “close contact” at risk of having been exposed. They will isolate for 14 days, but not in a purpose-built facility.

Remember, Omicron appears to be much more transmissible than even the Delta variant, which escaped quarantine not dissimilar to what the other 260 passengers and crew are undergoing several times this year. Even if international travel is reduced to almost nothing (and there’s no sign our slow-as-treacle bureaucrats are planning anything so radical) it’s certain that the ultra-transmissible Omicron will have already escaped and spread.

“(It) will get into the country, it is inevitable,” NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said.

So why aren’t these passengers in purpose-built accommodation? For one thing, at last report Howard Springs is full.

Dedicated quarantine facilities are a Federal Government responsibility, and new, more transmissible strains such as Delta and now Omicron have been the probability facing Canberra since early 2020.

In spite of this likelihood, the Morrison Government did little to proactively increase the number of purpose-built quarantine beds until earlier this year, when it doubled the capacity of Howard Springs to the current ceiling of 2000 beds.

New facilities at Mickleham, Victoria (500 beds from early 2022), Bullsbrook, WA (500 beds from early 2022), and Pinkenba, Queensland (500 beds, from April) will bring the number of Federal Government-involved quarantine beds to 3500, with another thousand to be leased by the Queensland Government near Toowoomba.

At best, this brings Australia’s purpose-built quarantine capacity to less than half the beds needed during some of the lowest intake months of the pandemic so far.

Again, if Omicron is as transmissible as the early data suggests, quarantine in accommodation that isn’t purpose-built just won’t cut it. Unless Canberra says it will, in which case we’re almost certainly in for more masks, more social distancing, more economic carnage and more empty footy grounds next year.

The Morrison Government had the chance to boost our purpose-built quarantine infrastructure more than 18 months ago, but it dithered. Short of pretty well ending international travel altogether, a very ominous Groundhog Day beckons. You know who to blame, COVID Sceptics, and it isn’t Dan Andrews.


Cartoon: David Pope, Canberra Times

“Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well,” wrote American commentator Alan Wolfe in reference to George W Bush, but his words ring just as true here.

“Conservatives are first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of government … but like all politicians, once in office they find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts them in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions – indeed, whose very existence – they believe to be illegitimate.”

Scott Morrison and his colleagues are conservatives. They aren’t comfortable with this governing thing, hence their inability to order vaccines on time, handle a bushfire crisis, properly manage our crucial relations with China and, yes, build dedicated quarantine facilities for a crisis that was eminently predictable.

Australia might have muddled its way through the Morrison years without too much damage – but for the once-in-a-century pandemic this government just couldn’t handle.