Coronavirus

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:31): The world raised a collective cheer this week when news bulletins carried stories about a COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough at Oxford University. It is the first positive news we have had about the pandemic since it spread across the world like an unstoppable flood six months ago—a tiny speck of hope in a bleak year. There are more than 200 vaccines in the works, including three here in Australia. I am taking part in phase 1 of a trial of Vaxine's COVAX-19 at the PARC research unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It could be a year before we know if it is effective in producing an immune response to fight the novel coronavirus.

In the meantime, we are seeing the dramatic impact of a second wave of the virus that has locked down Victoria. It demonstrates how ignorant and reckless complacency, in this case in hotels that were supposed to be quarantining people to avoid community transmission, can bring down an entire state of five million. In the United States, it is out of control, no matter what their lunatic leader claims. We have no wish for what happened there, the UK, Europe, Brazil and elsewhere.

Alarming statistics and disturbing accounts of the lingering effects on those who have had COVID-19 are emerging. We know it can be deadly among the older age groups with other chronic conditions. It has an average mortality rate of 4.1 per cent, yet it seems that millennials think they are bulletproof. In Los Angeles county, for instance, 52 per cent of those who caught the virus were aged under 41 years. They are also the group most likely to gather in numbers, ignoring social distancing. Images like crowded dance floors in nightclubs rightly drew the ire of our State Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer.

This 'it won't happen to me' attitude among the younger generation needs to be addressed urgently. We need more education with strong visual campaigns, much like we see with tobacco. There is a falsehood among the cohort that COVID-19 does not do as much damage to younger people. I have been shocked to see reports of the lingering after-effects. A full recovery is not guaranteed because the virus is still unknown. It is what we do not know that we must fear. Experts like infectious diseases specialist Dr Michael Peluso have been tracking coronavirus patients and discovered they are still suffering effects up to three months later.

Between 15 and 30 per cent of people report symptoms lingering for up to 90 days or more. It can have dire effects on the body's organs. It attacks blood vessels, causing damage to the lungs, the heart, the brain, the liver and the kidneys. Young people are being diagnosed with strokes and blood clots. A third of all deaths in intensive care were due to heart failure. It is from the domino effect of lung complications where the bloodstream is deprived of oxygen. Lung complications can lead to breathing difficulties, as they have for 68-year-old Paul Faraguna, who was the first patient admitted to the ICU at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the very last person to leave on 21 May after a four-week life-and-death ordeal.

I spoke with Paul's wife, Robyn, to see how he was travelling. Both caught the virus on the Ruby Princess. While Robyn has made a full recovery, she says in the two months since leaving the RAH, Paul is still experiencing breathing difficulties, particularly on walks uphill. Robyn wants to sound a loud warning to anyone who believes this insidious disease is nothing more than a severe case of the flu.

Richard Quest, CNN's genial spectacled business editor gives a colourful description of what it continues to do to him three months after what he thought were mild symptoms, likening his experience to a tornado. A dry, raspy, wheezy chest-wrenching cough has returned. He has become incredibly clumsy, has a sense of mild confusion, and it has done peculiar things to his digestive system. He said:

For those who have not had COVID, or witnessed the mess it leaves behind, again, I urge you, do whatever you can to avoid this tornado. It will roar through the body—kill some on the way—injure all in its path—and then when you think 'Well, thank God that's gone,' look around, the damage is strewn everywhere and will be with you long after the crisis has passed. COVID is a tornado with a very long tail.