Australia's Response to COVID-19.

Australia suffered two waves of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in 2020: the first lasting from February to July 2020 was mainly caused by transmission from international arrivals, the second lasting from July to November was caused by breaches of hotel quarantine which allowed spreading into the community. From a second wave peak in early August of over 700 new cases a day, by November 2020 Australia had effectively eliminated community transmission. Effective elimination was largely maintained in the first half of 2021 using snap lockdowns, while a slow vaccination programme left Australia lagging behind comparable countries. This paper describes the interventions which led to Australia's relative success up to July 2021, and also some of the failures along the way.

Public Health Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia: The Role of the Morrison Government.

The Australian Commonwealth government has four health-related responsibilities during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: to provide national leadership; to manage external borders; to protect residents of residential aged care facilities; and to approve, procure and roll-out tests and vaccines. State governments are responsible for determining what public health measures are appropriate and implementing them-including managing the border quarantine arrangements and the testing, tracing, and isolation regime-and managing the hospital response. This paper analyses the national government's response to the pandemic and discusses why it has attracted a thesaurus of negative adjectives.

Election 2022 should address unfinished business in health and aged care.

sion="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> AH Australian Health Review Aust. Health Rev. 0156-5788 1449-8944 CSIRO Publishing 36 Gardiner Road Clayton 3168 Melbourne Victoria Australia AH22054 10.1071/AH22054 Policy Reflection Election 2022 should address unfinished business in health and aged care S. Duckett Duckett Stephen PhD, DSc, FASSA, FAHMS, Director, Health and Aged Care Program, Honorary Enterprise Professor A * Grattan Institute, 8 Malvina Place, Carlton, Vic. 3083, Australia. * Correspondence to: Stephen Duckett Grattan Institute, 8 Malvina Place, Carlton, Vic. 3083, Australia Email: sduckett@unimelb.edu.au 7 April 2022 46 2 127 128 11 March 2022 Received 11 March 2022 15 March 2022 Accepted 15 March 2022 7 April 2022 Published © 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. 2022 The Authors The 2022 federal election is critical for the health and aged care sectors. Both parties need to address the COVID care deficit, oral health care, and commit to fix the aged care mess. The ongoing tragedy of First Nations health should also remain a priority. And a bipartisan acceptance of the need to address climate change is also required.

What should primary care look like after the COVID-19 pandemic?

The response to COVID-19 transformed primary care: new telehealth items were added to the Medicare Benefits Schedule, and their use quickly escalated, general practices and community health centres developed new ways of working and patients embraced the changes. As new coronavirus infections plummet and governments contemplate lifting spatial distancing restrictions, attention should turn to the transition out of pandemic mode. Some good things happened during the pandemic, including the rapid introduction of the new telehealth items. The post-pandemic health system should learn from the COVID-19 changes and create a new normal.