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How the UK is opening up in the face of 100,000 daily cases, while Australia remains locked down

In 12 days, England will head into "uncharted territory", lifting national coronavirus restrictions despite bracing for up to 100,000 new cases each day in the months ahead.
In Australia, where lockdowns are frequently imposed on single and low double-digit cases, many will find the UK strategy alien and remarkable.
Sydney has just extended a two-week lockdown by at least another seven days, after recording 164 cases in the last week. That's an average of 23 cases each day.
Lockdowns in Australia will continue to be a key weapon to fight the coronavirus until more people are fully vaccinated.
Lockdowns in Australia will continue to be a key weapon to fight the coronavirus until more people are fully vaccinated. (Getty)
More than 34,000 Aussies remain stranded abroad, unable to come home or visit dying loved ones, because of locked borders and rare-as-hen's-teeth flights which now attract astronomical five-figure prices.
Meanwhile, the UK government is opening up England on July 19, even though its data modelling is predicting daily case numbers could hit 50,000 and even spike to 100,000.
Just over 64 per cent of the UK population has been fully vaccinated, according to latest government figures, compared to Australia's 7.4 per cent, one of the worst rates in the developed world.
What all this means, according to Stephen Duckett, the former secretary of the Department of Health, is that Australia is fighting a new coronavirus war with old COVID-19 weaponry.
"As is universally acknowledged," he said, "the Australian rollout has been a complete and utter trainwreck.
"We started slowly, which in and of itself is not a bad thing.
"But then we didn't actually implement it well.
"And so we are at the bottom of any international league table in terms of proportion of the population fully vaccinated.
"In terms of policy and the public health response to COVID, we're still in 2020. We haven't moved into 2021.
"Other countries, like the UK, have moved into 2021, high rates of vaccination and so on, where we're still in 2020, with essentially very, very low rates of vaccination."
As indicated by Sydney's extended lockdown, Mr Duckett said, Australian states and territories are left with one option - test, trace and isolate.
"We have to continue with lockdowns and restrictions, because we haven't got the vaccination rates up."
In stark contrast, this week UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the "continuing effectiveness" of the vaccine rollout in England allowed it to consider loosening restrictions, rather than tightening them, as cases rise.
From July 19, masks will no longer be mandatory.
There will be no limit on capacity in pubs and restaurants, and guidance urging people to work from home if they can will be scrapped.
Tomorrow, Wembley Stadium will be filled with 60,000 football fans to watch England play Denmark.
Next week, hundreds of thousands of school children in Greater Sydney will begin term three in online classes from home.
"The UK is in a very different situation from Australia," Mr Duckett said, because of the huge differences in vaccination rates.
"They're in a situation where, for most people, and particularly for people over 60, if they do get infected with coronavirus, there will not be a hospitalisation or death.
"That is what the vaccines have been designed to do," he said, saying that "even though there are a large number of cases (in the UK), the hospitalisation rates and the death rate is quite low."
The UK is expecting a third wave of COVID-19, where the Delta variant will be dominant, to have lower rates of hospitalisations and deaths because of vaccinations, British health secretary Sajid Javid said.
Signalling their confidence in the vaccine, from August 16, people and children in England who have been fully vaccinated will no longer have to self-isolate after close contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19.
"Because this is uncharted territory for any country in the world, as you go further out, week by week, the projections are even less reliable," Mr Javid said, explaining the government was bracing for high daily numbers.
"As we ease and go into the summer, we expect them to rise.
"They could go as high as 100,000.
"We want to be very straightforward about this in what we can expect in terms of case numbers. But what matters more than anything is hospitalisation and death numbers."
Mr Duckett said he was not convinced the UK should be opening up quite so quickly, but he "understood the logic of the decision" they've made.
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