Reading through Professor Adrian Esterman’s responses to our questions, you may get the uncomfortable feeling that we’re floundering under the current COVID-19 wave.

There is, for instance, no longer any up-to-date public information on the number of cases, number of hospitalisations or the death rates.

Alongside this is the reality that a significant number of at-risk people are not being vaccinated as the population grows indifferent to the virus.

We ask Professor Esterman, epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of South Australia, about the mutations in the JN.1 subvariant, the severity of the illness it causes and why there seems to be no coordinated public health response.