This seems like the worst of all possible times to host the Australian Open, but despite the high number of COVID-19 cases, there’s less reason to postpone the tournament than last year. |OPINION by Hassan Vally australianopen tennis
There is absolutely no doubt that we are going to go through one of the more challenging phases of the pandemic. The emergence of the, with its ability to evade the immune response and its increased transmissibility, is going to be yet another significant test for us.
However, counterintuitively, we are probably in a much better position to hold this event than we were last year, before Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine program had begun, when players were forced to quarantine and the event was postponed for three weeks. In my opinion, the question is not whether we host the Australian Open but making sure we do this in as sensible and safe way as possible..
So let’s do a bit of a stocktake and assess just where we are compared to last year. The key difference of course between now and then is the vaccine coverage of the community. Despite the obvious need to get boosters into arms as quickly as we can, we are in an incredibly strong position as far as vaccine coverage is concerned.
There have been some incredible breakthroughs in terms of COVID-19 treatments, meaning fewer people in the future should be hospitalised.And along with this we have a much better understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and what we need to do to limit transmission. We understand more about the importance of airborne transmission and the role ofin limiting spread, and we are all more skilled individually in preventing transmission through mask wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene and the like.
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