Infectious diseases expert Dr Jim Newcombe continues his reflective journey into understanding this pandemic and how we should respond. 

Last month, I wrote in favour of a strategy of aggressive suppression of COVID in Australia.

I defined such a strategy as eliminating all community transmission of COVID in Australia — zero active cases in the community, accepting cases only in returned travellers in hotel quarantine.

This is different to the National Cabinet’s strategy of aggressive suppression, which uses the strict epidemiological definition of community transmission as locally acquired cases with no known source — aka, ‘mystery cases’.¹