He followed stronger advice from acting Victorian health director Ben Cowie, who recommended that “during the next period of increased transmission and the resulting pressure on the health system in July and August, people work from from home when it is practical to do so.” In the same advisory, he called for mask mandates to be reintroduced in several locations, including schools, with the exception of children in second grade and younger.
July was Victoria’s deadliest month since the pandemic began. The state recorded 737 deaths in the month to Sunday, July 31, compared with 505 in June.
Epidemiologist Professor James Trauer said that instead of imposing masks on school children, the first thing he would do if there was a need to reduce the spread of COVID-19 was to get people who can work from home they did it.
Epidemiologist Professor James Trauer. Credit: Scott McNaughton
“I think it will be considerably more effective than asking eight-year-olds to wear masks.”
The head of Monash University’s epidemiological modeling unit said he wasn’t sure how useful working from home would be at this stage of the current Omicron wave, but it could be the first stage of a plan for the next challenging variant.
“But I think we only need to do that if we’re really putting our health services … it should be an emergency measure when we get to the levels of stress that we’re getting at the moment.”
The number of Australians in hospital with COVID-19 is approaching the highest it has been since the start of the pandemic and for many months hospital staff have been reporting that it is being stretched dangerously low by the shortage of staff and beds.
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McVernon, who has been working more from home recently, said he thought it was lucky that Omicron’s last big wave, in January, happened during the holiday season, because even though people were socializing, he did it with the same group of people. , often for shorter periods of time.
“What workplaces do is bring people together from many different households, from many different geographies [and] they often travel together on mass transit.”
For those businesses where people can’t work from home, McVernon suggested doing what they did before the pandemic and changing shift arrangements so that crucial people don’t work at the same time.
Earlier this month, Australia’s Health Protection Principal Committee, which includes all of the nation’s health officials, called on employers to “consider the feasibility of some employees working from home “.
“We know that for many people in many businesses, you can work from home and still be productive,” Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly said last week.
Professor Alex Martiniuk, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, said that beyond getting vaccinated, which was number one, it was difficult to rank the benefits and harms of different public health interventions.
“So the general message to the public is to keep doing as much as possible without it hurting you too much, so [whether that be] reducing contacts, working from home [or] wear a mask on the bus or in the grocery store.”
Victorian Employment Minister Jaala Pulford said on Friday Victorian employers were getting the balance right when it came to working from home, saying “the leaders of our working community feel very much their responsibility to ensure their staff are healthy and safe at work.”
With Rachel Eddie and Ashleigh McMillan
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