Our View: Time the government broke free from its Covid-19 mindset

In the six days from last Tuesday to Sunday, a total of about 550,000 PCR and rapid tests were carried out, an average of 91,000 tests per day. The most tests – 133,874 – were carried out at last Tuesday, when people were returning to work after the long weekend and recorded 3,695 cases. The second highest number of cases in this period was Thursday (3,473), when the second highest number of tests (98,700) were carried out. And then on Monday, 3,782 new coronavirus infections were recorded out of a massive 111,926 tests.

The question is why are so many tests still being carried out? What purpose does the large-scale daily testing serve, other than to disrupt businesses and schools, inconvenience the unvaccinated and keep us in thrall to Covid-19? Most other countries, which the government often cited to justify its restrictions, have moved on, but here we are persisting with the mass testing, contact tracing and test-to-stay not to mention the use of the SafePass accompanied by a show of ID in most places.

In imposing the restrictions, the main argument used by the government was that we had to protect the health system, because there was a danger public hospitals would not be able to cope with a soaring number of cases and there was a limited number of ICU beds. For the last two years, everyone accepted this argument, but it is no longer valid. Despite the high number of daily cases in the last couple of weeks, hospitalisations have steadily declined. Last Tuesday there were 120 people in hospital, on Sunday there were 107 and on Monday 101 despite the high number of cases recorded every day; a little more than half (about 56 per cent) were unvaccinated.

Instead of focusing on this improvement, members of the scientific team stick to the familiar alarmist tune, expressing grave concerns about the high number of cases and attributing this to people no longer following the safety measures. Yet for several months now, it has been reported that the Omicron variant has much milder symptoms although highly contagious – only 0.1 per cent of people who are infected develop dangerous symptoms, according to international data. This percentage is only marginally higher than for flu hospitalisations.

The data would suggest that the public health system is no longer in danger of collapse and the Omicron variant does not pose a big health risk. The justification, therefore, for testing 10 per cent of the population every day no longer exists. Who is it protecting, considering there may be countless, asymptomatic carriers going around freely? Even the mandatory isolation for being a ‘contact’ for some has become unnecessary, as many do not become positive, but still have to stay off work for 10 days. This disrupts the operation of businesses, schools and hospitals unnecessarily.

It is time the government breaks free from its Covid-19 mindset, as so many other countries have done. Restrictions must end and the message must be that we ‘will live with Covid’, because this is the only way of returning to normality after two years of restrictions.