Western Australia will gamble on riding its first wave of COVID-19 into the flu season without restrictions, and it's a sensible approach, according to some epidemiologists.
The pandemic has been tearing through the state's hospital and ambulance workforce.
At last count, more than 3,500 health staff were absent due to COVID, compounding issues in the already stressed health system.
Despite calls from some medical bodies to reintroduce masks and other public health measures to stop the exponential spread, the state government has refused.
Instead, Premier Mark McGowan says he's hoping WA will reach its peak in COVID cases sooner rather than later.
"The longer we push this out, potentially, the worse it is," he said.
Modelling released by the Telethon Kids Institute earlier this month found Western Australia was only about halfway through its Omicron outbreak, with about half a million more people to be infected with the virus by the end of June.
Expert warns against keeping restrictions in place
Australia is experiencing its worst start to the flu season since the pandemic began.
Closed borders and stringent public health measures were meant to reduce COVID infections, but had the additional impact of keeping influenza at bay.
Deakin University chair in epidemiology Catherine Bennett says winter will be a tough season for hospitals around the country now those measures are gone.
"It's more like 2017 [to] 2019 when we had the largest infection rates from flu that we'd seen for a while."
But Professor Bennett says keeping public health measures in place such as mask mandates would be detrimental.
"Trying to stop [COVID] completely is a false promise. All we can do is maybe slow it down," she said.
"That pushes further infections into winter, when our hospital systems are already coping with a rise in flu cases."
That's one of the key reasons Premier Mark McGowan has cited for his relatively hands-off approach with community spread.
"We could be in the heart of the flu season in July."
Waning vaccine effectiveness
The Premier often lauds Western Australia's high vaccination rate, with the number of people triple dosed at more than 80 per cent.
But Curtin University population health expert Jaya Dantas said that for some, it had been months since they received their third dose and the efficacy of the vaccine may be waning.
"If you've taken the vaccine at the end of last year ... then efficacy of the vaccine immunity wanes," she said.
"Those who have taken the third dose more recently, it offers protection," she said.
Professor Dantas said the vaccine has contributed to a relatively low level of illness severity in the vast majority of COVID cases in Western Australia.
She says it's important West Australians are able to return to "normalcy", but still encourages the public to keep up public health measures, even if there are no rules forcing them to do so.
"Carry a couple of masks. Put them on when you're in a crowded place. There is a little bit of responsibility that lies with us," she said.
"Those who are able to take the flu vaccine should go ahead and take the flu vaccine."
Return to 'normal', but not too normal
Professor Catherine Bennett agrees that restrictions should not be reintroduced by the government, but says improving public health messaging is still critical as the flu season ramps up.
"When you remove rules for something like COVID, you need to set up that messaging," she said.
Professor Bennett says hygiene and other public health measures should still be used at an individual level, and the government should keep up public health information practices for other infectious diseases.
"There are ways we monitor what's happening in the population, but we need to feed that back to people so that they have the information," she said.
The hope is that people would then be able to make more informed decisions while going about their daily activities during the flu season.
"Maybe I won't go out for a couple of weeks if I can. Other people might say, OK, mask back on for the supermarket."
Premier Mark McGowan has conceded the state's health system is under "extreme pressure", with COVID wreaking havoc in the workforce and the situation unlikely to ease any time soon.
But with health experts, epidemiologists and Mr McGowan himself saying it's no longer possible to reign in infections, he is gambling on riding out the COVID wave before the peak of the flu season hits.
"Going through this, as hard as it is at the moment, at this point in time is probably better than going through it in July or August," he said.
