The pandemonium caused by snap border closures has increased the pressure on the federal government to create an Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) – a national body responsible for research and advice on how to deal with outbreaks, The New Daily reports.
The news comes at the end of a fortnight that saw frontline workers in Victoria wait more than four days to have their COVID tests results returned and travellers to Tasmania caught in confusing scenes as the border closed to Queenslanders.
Australia is the only OECD country that does not have a national CDC or equivalent.
Dr Chris Moy, vice-president of the Australian Medical Association, said the confusion over orders showed why Australia needs a national centre for disease control.
While Dr Moy stressed that the national response has been “very good”, he said it could have been helped along if “a vault” of information on how to respond had been available.
The states have had to put together their own resources for everything, from who should control security for hotel quarantine to how much PPE to stockpile, he said.
Border closures were a key example of why centralised information would be invaluable, Dr Moy said.
“At the moment it’s very patchy. We’ve done well because of goodwill between the states, but there have been holes such as border management.”
There has been reluctance from the federal government to create another governing body, but Dr Moy argued it would help the nation respond to outbreaks of any kind in the future.
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A national centre for disease control would cure COVID bungles, doctors say (The New Daily)
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Center for Disease Control / Daniel Mayer / Wikipedia / CCA BY SA 3.0