Abstract

Since July 2021 Melbourne has experienced a resurgence in delta variant COVID-19 cases. Despite a lockdown being introduced on 5 August, cases continue to grow, and at 17 September daily diagnoses have reached a 7-day average of 454. With Victoria’s COVID-19 strategy shifting away from COVID-zero, protecting the health of the population will require achieving high vaccination coverage as quickly as possible, maintaining control of the epidemic to protect the vulnerable, and ensuring that the health system has capacity to provide care to all who need it. An important question is: as vaccine coverage increases, how best can restrictions be eased that prevents health system capacity from being exceeded? The Covasim model was used to simulate options for easing of restrictions over the October-December period. Model inputs included data on demographics, contact networks, workforce composition, contact tracing systems and age-specific vaccination rates. As well as options for easing restrictions, additional policies around vaccine allocation and testing were examined to determine potential approaches to further reduce the epidemic peak.

Link to Burnet Know-C19 web site

This work was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health