Suppression of COVID-19 is working but a strategy of elimination is “unrealistic and dangerous” according to Deputy Chief Medical Officer.

Dr Nick Coatsworth responded to arguments that strategy of complete elimination should be pursued in an Sydney Morning Herald op-ed yesterday.

“Part of the challenge in this debate is that the definition of elimination is not commonly held by people who are prosecuting the case for it in the media,” said Dr Coatsworth.

“If we take the accepted public health terminology, that we reduce to zero the number of infections in Australia and target deliberate public health interventions to prevent re-establishing community transmission, that sounds very similar to what we have achieved in most parts of Australia.

“We have termed this “aggressive suppression”, where we take whatever measures are necessary, including the difficult decisions to reintroduce restrictions and close borders, to shut down community transmission where it occurs.

“However, true elimination is really only a realistic strategy when you have a vaccine. And we do not yet have a vaccine for COVID-19.”

Dr Coatsworth argued the assumption that a country could simply deal with the virus and then move on is dangerous.

“The risk elimination creates is a false sense of security that may diminish the community engagement with widespread testing and lead to a downsizing of the enhanced public health response, based on an assumption ‘we have got rid of the virus once and for all in our part of the world’,” he said.

“This is dangerous. Every country and region with the capacity to do so should be on the lookout and have the ability to respond to COVID-19 outbreaks, whatever their current state of community transmission.”