Live captioning by Ai-Media >> Good morning, everyone.
Paul Kelly here in Canberra.
It is great to have my interpreter here, Ramas.
Welcome Ramas, good to have you here.
I'm giving an update on what we know, what we don't know and
what we are finding out about this new variant, Omicron. A
new type of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19.
The first thing I would say is that this is not a new virus, it is
a new variant of a well known virus.
There are some questions I will come to shortly from you to make sure I
cover off on those but the first thing I would like to say
is we are pausing on our reopening schedule for two
weeks. This will allow us and is
already allowing us to gain a lot more information about this
new variant so we can go forward.
But very clearly, I need to say that we will have this variant
in Australia. In fact, we already have seven
cases that have been diagnosed, two of those have been in the community.
We are finding over the last week the virus that emerged
from southern Africa has spread to many other countries in the
world and so this is inevitable we will have this virus in
Australia, but that is not necessarily a bad thing and I
will go into those matters shortly, it relates to your questions that
have come through. Firstly, is omicron deadlier
than other forms of COVID-19? We have no information at this
stage that that is the case. In fact, the opposite may well
be true. Of the over 300 cases that
have now been diagnosed in many countries, they have all been
very mild or in fact have no symptoms at all.
So, this is something we are watching very closely.
Most of the cases so far outside of South Africa have been in young,
fit travellers, so that is an open question.
We have not seen an increase in deaths in South Africa where
most of the omicron cases have emerged but we are watching
that and in fact I have a meeting with South African
colleagues this afternoon to talk trough that exact issue.
It is one of those unknowns, but certainly something we are
really looking closely to solve that question.
The second question from you is, do the current vaccines work?
Again, we don't have absolute information on that so far, and
I would stress this. We have no information either
from the laboratory or clinical studies or from
population studies that the vaccines do not work.
I am a glass half full man, I will assume for now that they do work and we will
certainly have more information about that over the coming days and
weeks. What we do know is that many of
the cases that have been diagnosed in many countries
around the world from travellers, almost exclusively
from southern Africa, have been doubly vaccinated. Again,
they have not had severe disease, so we need to wait and
watch and gather more information.
Another question that has come through on the socials is
should we go back to wearing
masks? In those places and in those
jurisdictions that still require masks to be used, for
example in public transport, in high risks settings like aged
care and healthcare and so forth, yes, you definitely should be
using masks in those situations. It is in fact the law that you
would do that. For those of you in places
where masks are not mandated, you have a choice in that.
We have no shortage of masks in Australia, we've gotten used to
wearing masks in places in indoor settings.
If you feel safer wearing a mask, please do so.
It does work to stop the virus spreading.
Will Australia close its international borders again and
will people coming from those countries need to quarantine
for two weeks? That is not the case except the
people arriving from southern Africa at the moment.
But we are constantly looking at that question and will
provide information to government as we have more
information. At the moment, very clearly, the National
Cabinet made a decision that we will continue to work forward
and it is only related to those high risk settings for the time
being. Will more lockdowns does be necessary
for Omicron? I really hope not.
That is certainly not the plan and we are looking to see what
we need to do to keep Australia safe but also to keep on our
reopening agenda. I think I am out of time now.
Thank you so much for listening and we will be having regular
updates over the next few days and right through while we get
to know more about this virus. Thank you.
Live captioning by Ai-Media.