Key points
- Some of the country’s most respected infectious disease experts say Australia must urgently establish a national surveillance system to improve how the country collects data on coronavirus.
- Professor Sharon Lewin said that while Australia had fared better than many countries throughout much of the pandemic, the way it collects data is “still really poor.”
- Infectious disease physician Professor Allen Cheng said Australia’s coronavirus data was complicated by each state and territory having their own differing data systems.
Some of Australia’s most respected infectious disease experts have warned that our systems for collecting information on coronavirus infections, hospitalisations and deaths are poor and fragmented, preventing the country from properly preparing for the next wave of disease.
They say the answer is a national data system that constantly updates and eliminates the differences that exist between each state and territory when collecting information about how many people are getting infected, who is being hospitalised and where the virus is spreading.
“Our data systems are still really poor,” says infectious disease expert Professor Sharon Lewin.Credit:Simon Schluter
“We’ve got basically eight different systems operating,” said infectious disease physician Professor Allen Cheng, a former Victorian deputy health chief officer.
Professor Sharon Lewin, head of Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said that while Australia fared better than many countries throughout much of the pandemic, the way it collected coronavirus data was far behind comparable nations such as the UK and United States.
“Our data systems are still really poor,” Lewin said. “We really need better ways to understand who is being infected and how, who is being reinfected and who is in hospital, and who is dying in Australia.”
Tens of thousands of Australians are being infected with coronavirus and dozens are dying daily. In Victoria alone, about 500 people are in hospital each day infected with COVID-19.
Lewin, who called for surveillance system on par with the UK, said up-to-date national data was a significant gap in Australia’s pandemic response. The priority must be to ensure Australia enacts national policies to deal with future coronavirus outbreaks and to remove divisions between state responses, she said.
Cheng said there was a need for a national plan on how Australia monitors coronavirus into the future, as it faces its third Omicron wave – predicted to peak in late June – and as more contagious Omicron variants BA4 and BA5 are expected to become dominant, pushing up infection levels.
“It is about situational awareness,” Cheng said. “Information about how many people are getting infected, who is being hospitalised, where the virus is spreading … can help us make forecasts about when things are going to get worse or better.”
With Australia transitioning to living with coronavirus, abandoning measures such as contact tracing and mandatory mask wearing, University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor James McCaw said it was “as critical as ever” to understand how the virus was behaving.
“We’ve got basically eight different systems operating,” said former Victorian deputy health chief officer Professor Allen Cheng.Credit:Wayne Taylor
“What we need is systems that allow us to infer or estimate how the virus is spreading in the community,” the advisor to the federal government on its pandemic response said.
“It is through well-designed, sustainable surveillance systems that you can anticipate what the impact will be in terms of clinical loads in hospitals and where you may have an opportunity to actively respond and dampen outbreaks.”
Prior to winning the federal election, the Labor Party committed to establishing an Australian Centre for Disease Control, promising the dedicated body would have capacity to monitor current and emerging threats and work with state governments and medical providers to prepare for the next crisis.
It is unclear how the proposed centre will work in practice. But experts say Australia should look to UK’s coronavirus infection-tracking surveillance system, which has been praised globally as a leader in providing precise insights on outbreaks and hospitalisations.
Throughout the pandemic, Australia has relied heavily on the UK’s data system to forecast the potential outcomes of its own coronavirus waves.
The Imperial College London’s REACT study, the largest population surveillance study undertaken in England, has been instrumental in scrutinising the prevalence of COVID-19 in the general population.
It uses test results and feedback from more than 150,000 participants each month. This is on top of the UK’s regular coronavirus infection surveys from the Office for National Statistics that uses finger-prick antibody tests from randomly selected adults in England to assess the movement of COVID-19.
Burnet Institute epidemiologist Michael Toole said Australia was an outlier for its lack of a national standard information system for coronavirus and was lagging behind the US and UK in its data collection.
“This is something we desperately need,” he said. “NSW, for example, gives out basically no information on coronavirus deaths.”
But he warned it was going to be tough to nationalise public health data.
“All you need is for Tasmania or Western Australia to say ‘no’ and you’ve got no CDC,” he said.
“If I could wave a magic wand it would be CDC that is supported by all eight jurisdictions able to attract the brightest minds in Australia. That may have to be a network, rather than a concrete building.”
A spokesman for Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the department continued to examine ways in which the collection, storage and utility of data relating to COVID-19 and other notifiable diseases could be improved.
“The government is currently considering a range of options with respect to a future Australian CDC model,” he said.
With influenza cases soaring nationally, McCaw said such an infectious disease system could also help Australia better respond to the flu and other pathogens every year.
The mathematical biologist said one of the most critical learnings from the pandemic is the importance of having a robust surveillance system.
“The UK has shown us throughout the pandemic how many insights can be gained from a really strong surveillance systems,” McCaw said.
“We have an opportunity to reimagine or rethink how we do surveillance in Australia not just of coronavirus, but other pathogens and this is an opportunity not to be missed.”
Asked if we were prepared for the next pandemic, Lewin said she had doubts, adding that Australia must put measures in place now to ensure the next pathogen did not spread as fast and wide as coronavirus.
“If I am really honest, our conversations on preparing for the future have been very superficial in Australia,” she said.
“I’m not sure if we are ready. I’m worried we don’t have enough of the bones we need for the future. We definitely need to start preparing for the worst now.”
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