(Image: AP/Andy Wong)

It’s finally happened: Australia’s mandatory isolation periods for those infected with COVID-19 have, as of today, been scrapped. 

While those who have tested positive for the virus can’t visit high-risk settings like hospitals and aged and disability care facilities for seven days post infection, there are no legal rules on staying away from public spaces, taking public transport or wearing a mask.

Since the start of the pandemic, local experts have cautioned Australia to look to the northern hemisphere’s autumn wave — where there’s been a small but steady rise of cases across the past fortnight — to predict what may happen here in the coming months.

In Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach today called for Germany’s state governments to reintroduce masks in enclosed settings following a surge in cases. There has been a steady increase in positive cases around Munich following the start of Oktoberfest celebrations in mid-September. The country’s seven-day average of daily cases has reached more than 113,000 — the highest peak since April this year. At the start of this month, the federal government reintroduced mask mandates for long-distance trains. 

Meanwhile, France has entered an eighth wave of COVID-19, with a seven-day average of 68,000 cases — while in the UK last week, COVID-19 cases jumped by 25%. 1012682

In Asia, China has also seen a small rise in cases over the last week after dropping following a September wave, with a seven-day average of 6700 new daily cases. A surge of cases led to new lockdowns in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in the country following China’s week-long National Day holiday at the start of October. 

Beijing even saw a small but rare protest yesterday against China’s COVID restrictions (though police quickly removed banners and denied any protest took place).

It’s not all bad news: the US has seen a 20% reduction in new COVID-19 cases and a 10% reduction in ICU admissions across the past 14 days. 

But despite nearly three years of COVID myth-busting, health literacy lessons and empirical evidence on the effects of the virus, misinformation is still rampant. After questioning Australia’s 17% increase in mortality rates, Queensland LNP Senator Matt Canavan shared another tweet warning that the mRNA vaccines were “killing people, plain and simple”. Both tweets have since been deleted.

The excess deaths that Canavan linked to vaccines, as stated by the Actuaries institute, are due to the more than 15,000 Australians who died from COVID. 

Meanwhile, back in the US, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson discussed “findings” that alleged Pfizer had no proof that the COVID-19 vaccine reduced viral transmission — completely ignoring the fact that vaccines are designed to stop severe illness in vaccinated individuals, with reduced transmission a happy side effect from a reduction in viral load. 

Despite these steps backwards in public information and Australia’s scrapping of restrictions, COVID-19 is not gone, with experts warning caution as the northern hemisphere sees a slow uptick in cases and new COVID-19 variants emerge.