UNSW Adjunct Professor Bill Bowtell, one of Australia's leading public health strategists [...] strongly advocates the kinds of measures seen in New Zealand and thinks Australia should follow their goal of eliminating community transmission."There seemed to be decisions made by the Federal and Victorian governments that they would not learn from and adopt what was going on next door in New Zealand and even closer to home in Queensland and Western Australia," he said.
"I don't think the strategies adopted by those two governments have worked out very well.
"We would have been much better off to have adopted the New Zealand approach in the first place."
In June, NSW, which had been the worst-affected state in Australia before Victoria's second wave, had three weeks without community transmission, and Mr Bowtell said that was a good target to aim for.
That could again be achieved by shifting to stricter lockdowns, like in New Zealand.
"It's like extinguishing the embers of a bushfire. It's better than waiting until the flames are 10 metres high," Mr Bowtell said.
"It is better than dealing with hundreds of new cases a day."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-...s-how/12555562