Mask mandates were ditched weeks before that. ( Reuters: Ritzau Scanpix/Olafur Steinar Rye Gestsson)Ī month ago, it dropped all of its remaining COVID restrictions - the last one to go was a vaccine passport to enter clubs. The last restriction Denmark dropped was the need for a vaccine passport to get into nightclubs, but will nearly nine in 10 adults vaccinated it became fairly redundant. When I asked friends across dozens of countries what life was like for them at the moment, another outlier turned up.ĭenmark, a country with a population of 5.8 million - just bigger than greater Sydney - is recording about 600 cases a day. The UK, and England in particular, can probably be considered something of an outlier among current COVID responses for its relative lack of COVID restrictions and precautions. That said, even the current caseload is putting some hospitals back under pressure in regions with the largest outbreaks. The UK is currently seeing around 700 hospital admissions and a hundred deaths a day, compared to more than a thousand daily COVID fatalities during a very grim January. However, despite high rates of infection and low rates of vaccination in the young (those under 12 are still ineligible for a COVID vaccine), hospitalisations and deaths remain well below previous peaks and still very much concentrated in older age groups. One coronavirus total lockdown australias lessons full#Regular watchers of England's Premier League football will no doubt have seen and heard the full stadiums of fans, mostly unmasked, cheering on their teams this season. (Although, on top of this, the UK also has relatively high levels of virus-induced immunity, with COVID circulating widely, and at times wildly, over the past 18 months.) One country not included in the Fitch report that typifies "living with COVID" is the UK.Īround 90 per cent of its population over 16 have had one dose and about 80 per cent have had two - levels of inoculation that NSW is expected to reach within the fortnight. While it's likely there is some substitution away from public transport to private vehicles due to the ongoing COVID risk, this data does show people are getting out and about in large numbers. Now, with the worst of the outbreaks behind them and vaccination rates high in most of the countries included, toll road traffic has generally returned to, or even risen above, pre-pandemic levels. Toll road traffic for most countries troughed in April 2020 when they were in lockdowns. The pattern is remarkably similar: in the early phases of the pandemic, when most places were more or less completely locked down, toll road usage plunged to somewhere between a fifth and 60 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. Global ratings agency Fitch happens to compile data on toll road usage across a number of nations. Road traffic is one reasonable barometer for activity. How can we predict this? Because it's already happened in dozens of other countries. It will be similar for Victorians and Canberrans too, once their restrictions ease.Īnd that's even likely to be the case with COVID circulating in the community, assuming we do end up seeing at least 85 to 90 per cent of the adult population vaccinated. It's hard to comprehend for Sydneysiders after more than 100 days of lockdown, but it's probable that life will get back to something resembling normal remarkably quickly once restrictions are lifted. To borrow from Winston Churchill, today is not the end, but nor is it only the end of the beginning, it is hopefully the beginning of the end of the pandemic in Australia. It may not feel like it, but life for millions of Australians is about to return to normal, or at least something remotely approaching it.
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