DAVID KOCH:
New South Wales is bracing for another four-digit day after Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned the worst was still to come. She's anticipating case numbers to keep climbing, and for hospitalisations to peak in October.
NATALIE BARR:
Victoria's outbreak is showing signs of stabilising, despite concerns around the number of mystery cases and the list of exposure sites exploding. Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Michael Kidd, joins us now. Good morning to you. Firstly, what's your biggest concern around these outbreaks at the moment?
MICHAEL KIDD:
Good morning Nat, good morning Kochie. Look, my biggest concern is the numbers that we're continuing to see in the outbreaks in New South Wales and Victoria and of course also in the ACT. But the good news of course is the number of people who are turning up to get vaccinated against COVID-19, protecting themselves, their families and the wider community.
DAVID KOCH:
Is your fear that the numbers are going to get a lot worse? Can they ever realistically come back to zero?
MICHAEL KIDD:
So, I think we need to look at both New South Wales and Victoria separately here. Victoria, of course, is a number of weeks behind New South Wales in its current outbreak. There is still a possibility that Victoria, through the public health measures and the responses that we are seeing by the population right across the state, will be able to bring those numbers right down, if not to zero then certainly to very low numbers of cases of community transmission.
In New South Wales, it is incredibly important that people are continuing to follow the restrictions which are in place because this is stopping the numbers from escalating far more dramatically. And we have seen this happen in many other countries where restrictions have been lifted or have not been in place. So, it is really important that we keep these numbers as low as we possibly can in New South Wales. Eventually we will see that hump as the number of people who are vaccinated is increased in the state and the number of cases starts to fall.
NATALIE BARR:
Okay. Professor Michael Kidd, thank you for your time this morning.
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