COVID-19 Variants

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:58): A supplementary in relation to the minister's answer: is the minister saying that the South Australian health plan, particularly that for the reopening of the borders, at no time considered the probability that there would be other variants of COVID-19?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:58): That's definitely not what I said. In fact, I think yesterday I explicitly said that of course public health planning envisages the prospects of future variants, but you never know the qualities of a variant. In many ways, the Omicron variant highlights that because it brings with it both positive elements and negative elements, if I can put it in simplistic terms. The positive element is that the severity of symptoms in most cases is milder. The negative is the transmissibility. The transmissibility of Omicron is higher and therefore makes it very difficult to manage.

Another example of where those qualities have to change the way you respond to Omicron is in relation to regional and remote Aboriginal communities. I was in a meeting earlier this week with the Northern Territory Minister for Health and the Western Australian Minister for Health. I sought to meet with them because I wanted to discuss what their experiences were in dealing with the Aboriginal outbreak. What those discussions highlighted is that Omicron has significantly changed our response there too. With a variant of such high transmissibility, the earlier intent to transfer positive cases off remote communities to regional centres and particularly to Adelaide will increasingly be unrealistic.

We are already putting in place regional isolation facilities and I am sure that we will continue to work with communities to establish community-based isolation facilities. Whether it is aged care—we knew we had to change the aged-care plan as we opened the borders because living with COVID is not the same as an elimination approach, but then Omicron arrived. You have to be humble to learn its characteristics, and that takes time. There were certainly some early suggestions of the characteristics of Omicron that were not borne out over time. Some were. As we learnt what we could, the public health team took that into account in its planning, and our plans will continue to evolve because the pandemic has many more surprises to come.