AS much as we would like the COVID-19 pandemic to be over, "we're not there yet".
That is the message from Hunter New England Health's Dr David Durrheim who has warned that experts are still expecting more "variants of concern" to emerge.
"I think that there is a sense of fatigue, and people want their lives back, and thank heavens for vaccines which means we can do that largely in a safe way," Dr Durrheim said.
"And with simple measures in higher risk situations - like face masks - that can help mitigate risk we can protect ourselves and others."
But Dr Durrheim explained that while there were parallels between COVID and influenza, the "big difference" was that we did not yet know if we had reached a "final endemic strain" of COVID-19.
"With the flu we get a slow antigenic drift, where we get a small number of mutations," he said. "But Omicron's BA.1 came as a complete surprise from a completely different part of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree - it was a different virus, effectively.
"We have no guarantee that we're not in for another surprise... We don't know whether COVID will still throw another one of those at us. It's too early to tell.
"But I don't think we've reached a steady state yet and the viral evolutionary biologists certainly don't think we have. They expect more variants of concern. And they may be very transmissible and much more severe.
"As much as we'd like to be, I don't think we're through the COVID journey yet."
Dr Durrheim said with the relaxation of household contact measures and children returning to school this week, COVID would have an "advantage" - particularly as we edged closer to winter.
But he said anyone who is close contact of a COVID case should still work from home if they can, and wear a mask if they cannot.
"It will be very interesting to see what will happen with the case numbers," he said. "It prefers cooler environments, and it certainly prefers crowded indoor environments - which is the nature of our winter.
"And sadly, if we have cases in the high risk groups - which is the elderly and people with either chronic illnesses - those are the groups where we see the highest death rates and that has been the experience with BA.1 and BA.2. The burden of severe illness is falling very heavily on older people."
Dr Durrheim urged parents to keep their children home from school if they had any respiratory symptoms.
"We owe it to other parents," he said. "For those who are close contacts, take a RAT before going to school.
"Wearing a mask is clearly a requirement for those over 12, but encourage all children who can wear masks to do so."
Dr Durrheim said schools were doing a lot "practically", but a lot of things that were done in summer were "trickier" in winter - such as moving classes outside, and keeping windows and doors open.
"Those measures are simple but smart," he said. "Some schools have also invested in purifiers as well.
"But the key thing is that any symptomatic kids should be kept at home."
