Professor Paddy Mallon:

To get an idea of the extent of re-emergence, the best thing to do is to look at international examples from the past few weeks in countries that have low levels of community transmission. For example, in Germany there has been a large outbreak associated with one particular occupational factory, which has led to the lockdown of 600,000 people. The state of Victoria is currently grappling with the re-emergence of cases in multiple hotspots within the community, which has led to severe restrictions throughout much of the state. More than 1 million people are currently under restrictions where they almost cannot leave their homes. This can emerge very quickly. In the case of Victoria, it has emerged in a matter of days and Australia has gone from a country that had been largely Covid-free to having to introduce quite severe restrictions for a large segment of an urban population. When one looks between the lines in Victoria, the other lesson to learn is that it is scrambling at the moment to upscale its testing capacity. That is a lesson we also need to learn. We cannot get rid of all our testing capacity and expect to switch it back on overnight. The ability to respond to these sorts of outbreaks depends on days rather than weeks.