We have been warned.
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The daily number of cases of COVID in the ACT is going to double or triple over the next few weeks. At the moment, it's around a thousand a day but the ACT's chief health officer has warned that towards the end of July and beginning of August, it could reach 2000 or 3000 a day.
Why?
There are nasty new variants of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus. They emerged in South Africa in November last year, and spread globally to become the dominant strain in Australia.
These sub-variants - known as BA.4 and BA.5 - are very infectious. The chances of catching COVID by being close to someone who has already got it are very high.
Epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman of the University of South Australia puts the new strains on a par with measles, and measles is very infectious. If one person has it, nine of every ten people who come into contact with him or her and who are not immune (say because they aren't vaccinated) will catch it.
He says the new subvariants are "masters at evading immunity" which means, if you have already had COVID, there is a heightened chance that the new variants could give it to you again. With previous variants, catching COVID gave more protection against re-catching it.
On top of that, the vaccines aren't as effective against them.
Having said that, previous infection and vaccination does offer some protection, both against catching it again and against becoming seriously ill from it. That means that the coming wave will not be as bad as previous ones - but still serious.
Living with COVID means you have to dial up the protection when the exposure risk increases.
- Professor Catherine Bennett
But if you imagined the pandemic was over, you were mistaken. The authorities are ringing the alarm bells now so that we remember all those protective measures - mask wearing and keeping our distance - so that the third surge can be softened before it gets its momentum.
"Because so many people have at least some immunity because of previous infections and vaccination, each new wave appears to have a lower peak," Professor Esterman said.
"Unless a totally new variant comes along which is more transmissible and more deadly than these Omicron subvariants, sensible public health measures such as ensuring people are fully vaccinated, asking them to wear masks when in a risky situation, and improved ventilation in shops and offices should be sufficient to dampen numbers down and relieve pressure on our hospital system."
No worries then?
There are.
Because these subvariants are such good "masters at evading immunity", there is a possibility that we will keep getting infected and re-infected with COVID (unlike with flu where immunity remains after catching it for the winter season).
And repeated infections, even if there are only mild symptoms, may well increase the chances of getting long COVID. Scientists don't fully understand this condition but identify it by symptoms like fever, fatigue or breathlessness which linger for months.
On top of that, even mild symptoms still mean that an infected person can infect others.
"You might have a mild experience each time," Professor Catherine Bennett of Deakin University said, "but you are still out and about and mixing with people and that's a problem."
A doubling of the number of infections in the community means halving the chances of avoiding infected people in crowded places.
The point of the renewed urging to wear masks and take the measures which seemed to have been fading away is a need to head off the coming wave, she felt.
"Living with COVID means you have to dial up the protection when the exposure risk increases," Professor Bennett said.
"It just slows it down. And you need to do it as protection before rather than a response after. And we need to do it now."
The response
Employers are already adapting as sudden absences from work increase. Hotels offer vouchers to customers who agree to have their rooms cleaned every other day.
The ACT's chief health officer said that people who could work from home should do so. "If it's possible for you to work from home do this," she said.
The territory's education minister Yvette Berry said it was likely that schools would see a high level of staff absences in Term 3.
"I think we've got a long way to go on this. I think we're probably all just going to have to buckle up a bit and keep supporting each other, it's not going to be an easy time," she said.
"We just don't have any more relief staff to put in."
A labour hire company said it was already finding it hard to cope with the intense demand for staff on construction sites because of the severe shortage of workers to satisfy that demand.
"It's a very tight market right now," Steve Shelton of Canberra Labour Hire, which specialises in construction, said.
Labour shortages only become apparent on the morning of the hire. "Forty per cent of my staff called in sick today," he said. "There's nothing I can do about that."
"Demand is going to keep going up and supply will go down," he said in view of the coming wave of infections.
Any good news?
The good news is that new vaccines to cope with variants are already being developed. "Early results are very promising, and likely to give much better protection against BA.4/5," Professor Esterman said. "But this third Omicron wave - along with a very severe flu season - will likely see our hospitals struggling even more over the next few weeks.
"If things get bad enough, state and territory governments might be forced to reintroduce face mask mandates in many settings - in my opinion, not such a bad thing."