at Perth airport tomorrow.

They were due to fly over

from the family home in

Glasgow, but the flight was

cancelled.

“It completely floored us,”

said Greenhough, one of

almost a quarter of a million

Britons living in the state.

Although her Australian

husband has been hugely

supportive, the last two years

have been difficult. Shortly

after Australia’s borders were

shut, she was diagnosed with

breast cancer at the age of 38.

Under growing pressure,

certain travel restrictions

have been eased. Quarantine

requirements for positive

cases, close contacts and

those arriving from other

states have been halved to

seven days.

In contrast the

unvaccinated have been

banned from restaurants,

cafés, gyms and off licences.

There remains a visceral

anger among those who have

been separated from loved

ones for so long.

eastern states. For many

people separated from their

family for two years or more,

the decision was the last

straw, with travel plans

thrown into disarray.

Among them was a British

expatriate, Ash Greenhough,

who was meant to be picking

up her parents John and Val

shutting itself off from the

rest of the country.

Plans to open up last

weekend were postponed

indefinitely after an 11th-hour

change of heart by McGowan.

He said it would be “reckless

and irresponsible to open up

now”, because of the rapid

spread of Omicron in the

gradually opening them since

November, with international

students and backpackers

among the first to be

welcomed back. Other states

opened up their own borders

before Christmas.

Yet Western Australia has

persisted with a ruthless

Covid-elimination strategy,

an outbreak coinciding with

the winter flu season.

“There’s a gamble being

made here with the health of

West Australians,” said Dr

Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s

former chief medical officer.

Australia shut its

international borders on

March 20, 2020, but has been

install enough hospital beds.

This has fuelled fears the

health system could be

overwhelmed in the event of

an Omicron outbreak.

Doctors are worried that

delaying reopening the

borders until more than 80

per cent of people have had

their booster shots will risk

Anguish as Australia’s fortress state delays opening up again

The exceptions are parents

with a son or daughter in

Western Australia who can

find a seat on one of the tiny

number of flights allowed

under the visitor quota,

which is capped at 530

people a week.

“It is starting to look like

North Korea,” said Alan Joyce,

Qantas’s chief executive,

bemoaning Western

Australia’s isolation in a

deeply divided country.

The imminent arrival of

tourists elsewhere has

increased the pressure on

Australia’s biggest state to

open up.

Mark McGowan, the

premier, who has been

enormously popular for

doing whatever it takes to

“crush and kill” Covid, is

facing criticism from doctors,

business leaders, politicians

and sports stars.

He has been widely

accused of failing to use the

past two years — and a record

budget surplus from the

state’s iron ore riches — to

Australia’s prime minister

could not resist a swipe at the

tennis star Novak Djokovic as

he threw open the borders to

foreign tourists for the first

time in almost two years.

“If you’re double

vaccinated we look forward

to welcoming you back to

Australia,” Scott Morrison

said, in a reference to the

deportation of the

unvaccinated Serb, who had

been hoping to play in the

Australian Open last month.

But while the welcome mat

will be rolled out for

holidaymakers a week

tomorrow, roughly a third of

Australia will be off limits to

nearly all foreigners, whether

they are vaccinated or not.

Western Australia’s

borders remain closed to

tourists from other states or

overseas, meaning those

wanting to visit the vineyards

of Margaret River or the

beaches of Broome will have

to wait.

James Salmon Perth

ALAMY

Cable Beach, Broome is among those with few tourists. Ash Greenhough, right, has been separated from her parents, John and Val, for two years

BEN

SPENCER

Science Editor

Cast your mind back, if you can bear it,

to April 2020. A few weeks into the

pandemic and the country was fighting

blind. Covid wards were full, streets

were quiet and towns and cities locked

down. But where was the virus and how

fast was it spreading? The government

and its advisers did not know.

“Test, test, test,” the World Health

Organisation had urged world leaders.

And in Germany, South Korea and

Singapore they had done so, identifying

those carrying the virus, isolating them

and tracking down their contacts. These

nations quickly had Covid under control.

But the UK, it turned out, had no

diagnostics infrastructure. With the

capacity to perform just 7,000 Covid

PCR tests a day in those early days,

swabs were reserved for those in

intensive care. Matt Hancock, then the

health secretary, staked his political

reputation on getting tests up to 100,

a day by the end of that month, a target

he hit by the skin of his teeth and a

fudging of the figures.

Since then, a vast diagnostics network

has been created. We can do two million

tests a day. In shopping centres and car

parks, PCR tests are administered with a

few minutes’ notice, the swabs

dispatched by courier to labs, results

delivered by text message, often within

the day. Free lateral flow tests arrive by

post at the click of a button.

Last week Boris Johnson in effect

announced the end of the pandemic.

Remaining rules will be lifted and

isolation will no longer be mandatory for

those who test positive. On February 21 a

new strategy for “living with Covid” is to

be published, which is expected to set

out how the testing network will be

scaled back. Testing centres are

expected to be reduced and free lateral

flow tests restricted to schools, hospitals

and care homes.

But this will be a missed opportunity.

Having created this huge testing

network, why not use it? Instead of

dismantling the pop-up centres, why not

use them to boost dwindling childhood

vaccination rates or repurpose them as

cancer screening centres? Britain has

among the worst cancer survival rates in

the West because too many tumours are

spotted too late.

And having fostered a culture in

which people test themselves for a virus

in the morning before leaving for the

office, why not continue to nurture it?

Technology exists in which a lateral

flow test could give a result not just for

Covid but also for flu and RSV

(respiratory syncytial virus), two

respiratory viruses that place huge

pressure on the NHS each winter.

Instead of showing two lines — one

control line and a second line for a

positive Covid result — they would have

four lines, with one for RSV and one for

flu. In the future anyone with a cough or

a cold could take such a test.

It would take investment. But given

the cost of treating these illnesses, it may

well end up saving money.

That is not to say any of this would

need to be mandatory. The prime

minister could still proclaim victory and

grant us our freedom. Covid restrictions

have been largely unenforceable since

the beginning. Following the rules has

always been a collective voluntary act.

We tend to be fascinated by our own

health and, driven by this curiosity and a

widespread sense of the common good,

and directed by clear guidance, many

people would continue to take tests.

The diagnostics infrastructure is one

of the success stories of the pandemic. It

should be harnessed, not thrown away.

Don’t scrap

free tests,

use them for

flu instead

LUCKY TIMING

It is comforting to think that

we did it all ourselves. But at

least part of our success is

down to luck.

In November we were midway

through our booster programme to

counter the effects of waning immunity.

More than 18 million people, mostly

vulnerable, had been tripled-jabbed

when Omicron arrived.

Because the variant has 37 mutations

on its spike protein, it is much more

likely to evade vaccines. A higher level of

immunity was required to make up the

difference: luckily, boosters increase

antibody levels by a factor of 30. The

variant arrived just when our most

vulnerable were at peak levels of

protection.

There are some early signs that

immunity levels from boosters may be

waning. Israel was the first country to

routinely offer a booster shot in the

summer. The country is currently

offering a fourth booster dose to

over-60s to counter a sharp rise in

severe cases. Our own programme of

third doses may have come at just the

right time.

MILDER OMICRON

The variant is causing

thousands of deaths globally,

particularly in countries with

low protection in the elderly.

Yet it is about 70 per cent intrinsically

milder than previous variants — just as

well, given how fast it spreads.

Because of its infectiousness, most

outbreaks have been short and sharp.

And there is one positive consequence.

A prior infection of the Delta variant —

which has killed millions globally — does

not offer much protection against

Omicron. However, catching Omicron

does appear to offer protection against

Delta.

In Britain, the Delta variant —

dominant just three months ago — has

been virtually wiped out by Omicron. In

doing so, the new variant has more than

halved the Covid death rate here.

It is possible that a future, deadlier

Covid variant could set us back.

However, now that virtually everyone in

Britain has either been vaccinated or

infected — offering strong protection

against hospitalisation, if not

infection — future variants would be

unlikely to cause a severe burden on

the NHS.

When the end of self-isolation was

brought forward, Dr Simon Clarke,

associate professor in cellular

microbiology at the University of

Reading, said it would either be

“very brave or very stupid”. It could

well be both, depending on whom

you ask.

Professor Devi Sridhar is one of the

Covid advisers to Nicola Sturgeon,

Scotland’s first minister. She said:

“There is no right answer with Covid —

just a set of tradeoffs. If you prioritise

reducing death at all costs, then

Australia and

New Zealand are doing great. If you

prioritise international travel and

other freedoms, then they’re doing

terribly.”

Britain’s leaders may be among the

first in the world to declare the

pandemic over. Whether it is over for

you will depend on your health,

vaccination status and outlook. What is

clear from the data, though, is that Covid

has been tamed.

@TomHCalver

4

5

PERSONAL

RESPONSIBILITY

Immunity can only help us so

much. Like any respiratory

virus, Covid spreads when people

interact with each other. If we socially

distance and see fewer people, rates will

be lower.

People are still acting differently from

how they did before the pandemic.

According to a survey of “close

contacts” by the London School of

Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, adults

were meeting about ten people a day

before Covid arrived; this fell to two

during the first lockdown, and remains

around three.

One possible reason why the

modelling scenarios presented to the

government were so wide of the mark is

their failure to predict human behaviour.

Scientists here assumed that people

would become more cautious only if

governments changed the law.

What we now know, however, is that

people tend to change their behaviour

when infections rise, even if they are not

told to do so.

International data backs this up.

Sweden defied calls for a full lockdown

yet a German study published in April

last year found a “profound change of

actual mobility patterns”, with people

travelling less and spending more time at

home. Deaths may have been reduced

with a nine-week lockdown, they found,

but only by 38 per cent. “This finding

suggests that voluntary social restraint

limits infection growth to a considerable

extent,” it concluded.

Such patterns were repeated in

Britain before Christmas. After plan B

restrictions were introduced, visits to

recreation venues increased — before

falling drastically in the week before

Christmas, as people isolated

themselves to protect their loved ones.

When isolation stops becoming law in

a few weeks’ time, the number of people

who decide to keep doing it anyway will

be a crucial factor in determining how

high cases get.

There are two types of people, says

Dr Nilu Ahmed, a psychologist at Bristol

University. “Some comply because it is

required by law. Others, though, out of

altruism for others or minding their own

health needs, were more likely to

comply throughout the waves of

lockdown. We see this now with the

lifting of restrictions — many people will

continue to wear facemasks and avoid

crowded spaces because of health

worries for themselves or others.”

Government scientists think it could

come down to public messaging.

“Protective behaviours developed

during the pandemic can easily reduce

or cease if not promoted longer term,”

said new Sage papers released on Friday.

3

FREEDOM DAY

Vaccination is not the only

reason for our strong defences:

immunity can also be acquired

through recovering from Covid

infection.

This is a much more controversial

benefit: while many experts believe that

“hybrid immunity” offers a more well-

rounded immune response than

vaccination alone, it carries a far higher

mortality risk.

Many who catch it and avoid hospital

can still develop seriously unpleasant

post-viral conditions. An estimated

947,000 people have had “long Covid”

symptoms for more than 12 weeks.

Nonetheless, the number of people in

Britain who have been infected at least

once is substantial.

Estimates based on modelling by

Cambridge University, combined with

figures from the Office for National

Statistics (ONS) and case numbers,

suggest that more than 37 million people

have caught the virus in England —

nearly two-thirds of the population.

About 22 million have caught it since

July 19, 2021 — England’s “freedom day”,

when many Covid restrictions were

removed. Britain was one of the few

countries to maintain relatively high

infection rates throughout 2021, yet

hospital admissions never breached

unsafe levels.

There were other reasons for opening

up when we did. A supporter at the

time, Paul Hunter, professor in

medicine at the University of East

Anglia, said: “Leaving step four until the

autumn carried a far greater risk.

Delaying the opening of society would

have pushed back more infections into

the autumn, at a time when pressures

on the health service may have been

greater.

“There is a real case for the argument

that opening society when we did and

the resulting infection rates enabled us

to avoid a big surge in hospitalisations

and deaths this winter.”

This theory will be tested when zero

Covid countries such as New Zealand,

which have very low infection rates,

finally open up.

Britain seems to have

beaten the virus.

But have we been

smart or just lucky?

TOM

CALVER

Data Projects Editor

The pandemic is over, ministers all but

declared last week. “We are the freest

country in Europe thanks to the strong

defences we have built,”, boasted Sajid

Javid, the health secretary. Politicians

like to claim credit when things go well —

and right now, according to most

measures, they are.

Infections remain high, at about

250,000 a day, and we still do not know

the extent to which this wave will

produce a surge in long Covid. Yet most

cases are, for now, resulting in a mild

flu-like illness.

A year ago, one in 100 infections

resulted in death. Now, it is more like

one in 2,000. Before Christmas, some

modellers presented scenarios of up to

10,000 hospital admissions a day. The

reality for the NHS was a largely

manageable peak of 2,300.

Ministers have enough confidence in

our ability to handle future waves to

remove the self-isolation safety net. But

what were the key factors that have got

us here — and how many were actually

within our control? How much of our

success is down to “following the

science” and how much of it was luck?

VACCINE UPTAKE

Vaccines have cut short the

pandemic. It is impossible to say

what would have happened in

2021 without them, but if we had acted

exactly as we did and had had no jabs,

another 210,000 people could have died

in England.

Most of the wealthy world has caught

up with Britain’s early lead on

vaccination. About 77 per cent of the

population here has had a first dose,

compared with 84 per cent in Italy and

95 per cent in Portugal. This is because

we were much slower on child

vaccinations.

Yet rollout has been strong where it

matters. Our uptake rates among the

most vulnerable are some of the highest

in the world. Just 365,000 over-60s in

England remain unvaccinated, about

2.7 per cent of the total. In France it is

6 per cent; in Bulgaria, one of the worst-

hit nations, it is nearly 62 per cent.

Britain’s defences have been

bolstered by boosters. A perk of being

one of the first nations to double-jab its

residents is that we had many people

eligible for a third. So far, 91 per cent of

over-60s have had a third dose, one of

the highest rates in the world.

Analysis suggests that if we had not

had the booster programme, about

30,000 more people could have died of

Covid this winter. If that sounds

excessive, it is worth noting that in

America — where coverage is much

lower — deaths are approaching 75 per

cent of their peak last winter.

Why has vaccination been so high

here? “We have total agreement when it

comes to the benefits of vaccines for

adults,” said Dr Christina Pagel,

professor of operational research at

University College London. “Unlike the

US, there is no MP-led or establishment-

led antivax movement. The NHS is

incredibly trusted.”

This year, vaccines are not the only

safety net at our disposal. Britain has

ordered about five million courses of

antiviral medicines that can help stop

people exposed to the virus from getting

seriously ill; another added layer of

protection, particularly for the

immunocompromised.

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Number of people estimated to have

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Number of people thought to have had

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