COVID cases are rising in WA, and experts warn the virus is still a force to be reckoned with – ABC News

COVID-19 hasre-emerged on the radar for WestAustralians.

The community is talking about the virus again, and for some it could be cause for concern.

Caseshave been increasing in WA since early September,driven by the Omicron XBB variant EG.5.

"We all know someone who's got COVID-19, or who has recently had it," Premier Roger Cook said this week after recovering from the virus himself.

People are noticing growing numbers of friends and co-workers falling ill, but for many it is a long time since they have given the pandemic much thought.

WA is about 10 weeks into its eighth COVIDwave, seeing a spike in hospitalisations and in cases amongst residents of aged care homes.

This week there were 201 patients in hospitalwith COVID, up from 134 at the start of the month.

Five COVID patients are in intensive care units and in the most recent reporting period there were two deaths.

For now, COVID hospitalisations remain lower than the levels reached during the two most recent COVID peaks in WA, which saw 268 COVID hospitalisations in December 2022, and 258 in May 2023.

But WA's Chief Health Officer Andy Robertsonsaid he expectedthis current wave to be larger.

"I expect it will track upwards a bit further," Dr Robertson said.

"It's really difficult to forecast at the moment, we may be getting up towards the peak but, as you know from previous experiences, often we can't really predict the peak until after we've crested.

"But obviously this is a good time to encourage people to do the right thing, particularly if you're unwell, don't go to work, don't go to events, that will help.

"Please don't go and visit your grandparents, or go to a nursing home orhospital."

Dr Robertson said at this stage the state's hospitals were "coping well"but he said illness picked up in the community was impacting the levels of health staff available.

WA's aged care sector is also being impacted, with 209 COVID-positive residents and 93 cases among aged care staffas of November 8.

Dr Robertson said at this stage there were no plans to introduce mandatory restrictions or mask wearing for the community.

COVID hospitalisations remain the key indicator for WA Health, but how it is monitored in the broader community has changed a lot recently.

The days of enormous queues for PCR testing and daily press conferences with the premierare a distant memory.

And last month WA Health shut down its website that allowed members of the public to self-report a positive RAT result.

The government still releases a 'COVID-19 Weekly Surveillance Report'every Friday withthe latest available data, but since October 9 that only includes PCR results.

In that most recent reporting period, there were 466 official cases.

But a recentanalysis of Perth's wastewater indicatedthe virus was being detected in the community at levels similar to November 2022, when there were up to 11,000confirmed weekly cases.

Wastewater samples are collected twice a week from treatment plants in Beenyup, Subiacoand Woodman Point, and are analysed by WA Health.

Between those three plants, about 79 per cent of Perth's population is covered by the analysis, which also confirms trends and which strains or variants of COVID-19 are prevalent at any given time.

However, WA Health said the wastewater testing results should be interpreted with caution because it does not detect individual cases, rather virus particles.

People who have had COVID-19 shed the virus when they go the toilet and can continue to shed viral particles for several weeks after they recover.

The Director of the Australian National Phenome Centre at Murdoch University, Professor Jeremy Nicholson, warned people against assuming changes to the COVID testing regime meant there was any less danger.

"Western Australia had one of the best testing programs in the world, and it kept the state safe," he said.

"People think because that was shut down then the virus has gotten safer. And it hasn't."

But Professor Nicholson pondered whether rapid antigen tests themselves were becoming less reliable as the chemical 'shape' of the virus changed with each new strain and each new variant.

"Eventually you get to the point that the test isn't particularly good for that particular virus, and it's possible that we might have reached that now," he said.

"There are people that have been tested, who havevery clearly got the infection, and yetit's still coming up as negative."

The chief health officer said RATs remained reliable, but Dr Robertson did encourage anyone unwell and testing negative to follow up with further testing the next day as the virusmay not yet be showing up.

"RATs have actually remained fairly good, and that's not to say, in future, there may not be mutations in some of those areas that may impact them, but generally, our pathologists are pretty happy that they remain pretty robust for detections," he said.

Dr Robertson did however warn that people should not wait for a positive result to begin isolating.

"We are obviously strongly encouraging people, as soon as they get symptoms don't come to work, don't go to an event, stay at home, and stay at home for at least five days.

"Even if you're feeling better towards the end of end of it, it takes generally four or five days before you've cleared the virus and become less of an infectious risk."

Professor Nicholson said work was being done on a new urine test that could help test for when a person was infectious with COVID-19.

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"We developed a test now that in the urine, you can tell whether you are aninfectious individual, because thereare certain metabolites in there that only present when the virus is actually replicating," he said.

"And that's something we're trying to develop as a sort of statewide initiative to create a new urine test that would allow you to know when you were safe to go out into society again."

The Health Department also continues to encourage handwashing and voluntary mask-wearing in certain settings.

And the number one piece of advice from the chief health officer, who recently had COVID himself, after almost four years of dodging the virus, is to stay up to date with COVID vaccinations.

There has been marked drop in the number of WestAustralians keeping up to date with COVID boosters.

According to Commonwealth data, just 197,000 WestAustralians over the age of 18 received a COVID jab in the past six-months.

That leaves the vast majority of the population, 1.9 million adults in WA, who have not had a COVID vaccine or booster in the past six months.

Then there is also a minority, just 44,000WestAustralians, who never got the COVID vaccine in the first place.

ATAGI recommends anyone over 65, or with significant health issues, gets a COVID booster every six months.

But Dr Robertson said anyone hoping to avoid long COVID or endangering vulnerable people in the community should consider doing the same.

"For those who are under 65 or who are otherwise healthy, they should consider it particularly if working in areas of high risk," he said.

Areas of high risk includehealth, aged, and disability care settings, but also anything involving lots of people, such as hospitality or events work.

"The vaccinations do protect people from severe illness. They are cheap or free. They are effective, and they're incredibly safe," Australian Medical Association WA president Dr Michael Page said.

"So we certainly recommend people keep up to date with boosters.

"People should also consider vaccinating their children, particularly those aged under 12."

Professor Nicholson warned there was increasing evidence emerging about the dangers of long COVIDand the susceptibility of children to the condition.

"There's now strong scientific evidence with every time you get infected with COVID that it makes your chance of getting longCOVID worse and the thing is that children can get affected by it," he said.

"Because there's this sort of assumption, which is not correct, that you have to have a severe disease in order to get long COVID.

"Thatsimply isn't true. Probably the majority of people with long COVID only have fairly mild disease when they actually had it."

Professor Nicholson has suffered from long COVID himself and said the condition left him diabetic and with a heart injury.

"COVID has some, what we call 'occult effects', they're silent, so you don't necessarily have to have direct symptoms in order to have a long-term health risk from this," he said.

"You don't get complacent about those other things such as diabetes, do you? So why should you be complacent about something that can cause some of the worst illnesses in our society?"

Editor's note: Thisstory initially said wastewaster testing had picked up 50,000 cases in the community. But wastewater testing detectslevels of virus particles in sewage rather than actual cases. As a comparison, the most recent wastewater tests detectedvirus particles at a level comparable to November 2022,when there were about11,000confirmed COVID-19 cases in the community.

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COVID cases are rising in WA, and experts warn the virus is still a force to be reckoned with - ABC News