By: Sergio Correa, Managing Director Daabon
Australia
Australia is one of the most
successful countries in the
world to handle the medical challenges of COVD-19 with a total of 909 deaths
for a population of 25 million. For some, any number is big and for others
909
deaths is insignificant compared to any other winter flu season. To
understand
the success of Australia we need to consider a few factors such as:
•Australia is, geographically,
a very remote island and is
capable to control international borders very easy compared to other
nations.
•It has only 25 million
habitants with a population density
of 3.4 persons per square kilometer making it one of the most sparsely
populated countries in the world.
•The country is extremely
wealthy (2019 GDP per capita of
$55,060 USD, Source: Worldbank), and its people have created enough wealth
over
the past 30 years to accept and be able to overcome very strict lock down
measures.
•The level of education,
respect for the law and
collectivistic mentality is high.
Considering the above its very
difficult to compare other
countries with Australia.
The federal government’s
strategy against COVID-19 was more
focused on eradication rather than control. During the initial wave we
reached
very low number of COVID-19 cases and we went into an early national lock
down.
Once it was controlled the responsibility was passed to each state’s
government. Since then, the only state that had a second wave was Victoria.
Daabon Organic Australia (DOA) is located in Melbourne, Victoria, so we
underwent four months of lock down, while the rest of the country remained
open. This second wave was caused by a failure in the hotel quarantine
system,
which the Victorian government set up, as they repatriated Australians that
had
been stranded around the globe. The learning from this failure was
investigated
and fixed, leading to shorter and strict lockdown measures, whenever
community
translation was detected. Following this, a small number of outbreaks were
controlled by three to five days of localized lock downs together with very
advanced tracing programs.
The initial economic impact
for the federal government was
estimated at over AUD$150 billion in order to fund the main economic support
programs: Job keeper, Job seeker and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) support for
companies. This values each lost live at over AUD$150 million, but the
reality
is that the government investment was focused not only on peoples live but
more
towards the survival of the economy.
Two very important industries
have been affected,
international education and tourism. International education is the main
source
of income for most universities in Australia, leaving many universities
having
to reinvent their business models. In the case of tourism, similar to the
rest
of the world, no flights mean no travelers, so millions has been dependent
of
government support to keep afloat (agencies, hotels, restaurants, venues,
bars,
clubs…etc.). These two industries have affected a few of our key customers
and
have pushed DOA to move faster into new segments for our brand-new refinery.
Twelve months later since the
pandemic started, Australia’s
economy is the example to the world, unemployment level is improving (6.4%,
Jan. 2021, Source: ABS), property prices are moving up, the Australian
dollar
has strength and live appears normal for most. At DOA, we look forward to a
revamped 2021, welcoming new customers from multiple sectors to visit and
audit
our refinery in order to benefit from our latest technologies in
contaminants
reduction and control.
Its always easy to justify that with money most challenges are easy to overcome, but I still believe that Australia’s handling of the pandemic has been fantastic. Time will tell if the economic cost and separation of the rest of the world is worth it.