The holiday festivities have opened the Covid. The Christmas season brought parties, festivals, family reunions with enthusiastic hugs, dinners, dancing and energetic karaoke sessions, but Covid cases have now inevitably skyrocketed.
Almost all of the Australian population have had two jabs and nearly four billion people have been fully vaccined across the world.
We know that the vaccine reduces the risk of getting sick from Covid and we have effective treatments for the virus.
It is incredibly unlikely that a vaccine breakthrough will cause severe illness. In Australia, less than 1% of people with Covid are admitted to hospital.
Chances are you will be okay if you can avoid Covid.
Many Australians have difficulty coming to terms with the fact that avoiding Covid is no longer a viable option.
It's hard to remember when Covid zero to Covid everywhere was telling us to stay home to avoid the killer virus.
Covid zero, a concept that was hopelessly naive at best and a dangerous political fallacy, has been the cause of demonising Covid in Australia for a long time.
Over the past few months, there has been a tidal wave of Covid-related mental distress in our emergency departments.
Difficulty accessing reliable guidance or timely tests are some of the health concerns that are looming large.
The majority of people don't need to be in the ED and are safe to convalesce at home, with plenty of fluids and a subscription to a streaming service.
It goes against every instinct of healthcare professionals to discourage people from going to the ED if they are sick or worried, but we know when to worry about Covid now.
The pressures of this outbreak on the health system and the need to preserve our critical care capacity have proved to be an additional insult to years of insufficient resources.
The recent implementation of at- home rapid antigen testing is a welcome development. The foreign structures containing the virus that causes the body's immune response are identified by RATs.
The liquid solution helps stick to a specific chemical on the paper strip if Covid antigens are present.
When you are most likely to have symptoms and when your RAT is most likely to be reliable, the peak of the viral loads is around five to seven days after the infection. If you don't have a high viral load or enough antigens, a RAT will be negative even if you are in the early stages of the disease.
Over time, the levels of detectable antigen change so yesterday's negative RAT doesn't explain away today's nasty headaches or tomorrow's annoying cough. A positive RAT tells us everything we need to know, but a negative RAT doesn't.
If there is enough material to look for the specific sequence of the Covid-19 virus, then you can use the PCR.
It is almost certainly accurate to identify the presence of Covid with a PCR test. A single test costs at least $100 more than a RAT and requires significant manpower.
If we had enough RATs sooner, the cost of millions of PCRs could have been better spent.
Millions of dollars could have been better spent on supporting healthcare workers and helping young people who are at risk of poverty.
The first two waves of the epidemic were in an inner city London hospital that was hit hard by Covid. Our circumstances were not unique to the NHS, we were forced to invent innovative ways to save lives, and we had to run futile attempts to save our lives every night.
The youngest person to die in our hospital was in her late 20s, the same age as me, with no underlying medical conditions.
It is difficult to convey how lucky we are in Australia even in our current state of crisis, so I sometimes think about her when I am teaching an elderly gentleman how to book his booster.
Less than two years ago we had no viable treatment options on the horizon and we didn't know if vaccination was a possibility.
It might feel like the cloud of doom overhead will linger forever, but things are changing, we are vaccine free, and population immunity is rising.
We need to protect our vulnerable communities and emergency resources, keep testing, and keep our masks on for a little while longer.
Dr Sarah Simons is an emergency medicine doctor.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
