Australia has important lessons to teach us about the benefits of a centralized response to COVID-19.
Where should the United States look for guidance on “flattening the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic? Anne-marie Boxall, an adjunct associate professor at The University of Sydney, suggests that Australia may have a lot to teach us.
“Decision-making in a pandemic is tough, but in federations like the U.S. and Australia, it is even tougher,” writes Boxall in a recent blog for The Milbank Memorial Fund. “Yet, success will only come through coordinated, whole-government, whole-nation action.”
Boxall describes Australia’s recent move to establish a national cabinet, made up of elected officials from both major parties and the nation’s chief medical officer, to coordinate and deliver a consistent response to COVID-19. This “wartime” cabinet makes decisions about health, education, public safety, social services, and infrastructure and sets policies governing:
- Testing criteria.
- Limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings.
- Visitor restrictions in aged care facilities.
- Suspension of elective surgeries.
- Mandatory quarantine for international travelers.
- Self-quarantine obligations for people with COVID-19.
- The conditions under which any state can adopt additional measures.
“There is still some scope for local-level variation, but the onus is on leaders to demonstrate to the increasingly nervous public why exceptions might need to be made in one part of the country,” writes Boxall.
As of April 14, 61 Australians had died from COVID-19 and 6,377 people, most of whom were travelers returning from overseas, had tested positive. More than 270,000 people had been tested for COVID-19, the highest per-capita test rate in the world. Testing is helping reduce community transmission because people who test positive are required to self-isolate, writes Boxall.
“Some Americans might be tempted to dismiss the idea of a national decision-making body as infeasible in the United States,” Boxall concludes. “But if there is one lesson so far from the world’s response to COVID-19, it’s that the impossible has suddenly become possible.”