Australia's Victoria lockdown era under scrutiny as former health chief calls restrictions excessive

The former Chief Health Officer of Victoria, Brett Sutton, says some COVID-19 measures used during the state's pandemic response were excessive and that certain steps may never have been necessary, in an interview with radio host Neil Mitchell. Sutton, who led Victoria's health department from March 2019 until July 2023, described the experience as a period of hard lessons. "Cleaning surfaces was most likely a waste of time," he said. "Touching elbows was probably never necessary. They're the things that we learn as we go."

Sutton argued that the science eventually pointed to airborne transmission as the primary driver of spread, noting that public health messaging during the early stages overemphasised surface contact, handshakes, and droplets. "Through a hundred years of understanding infectious diseases, we overemphasised the idea that it'll pass through surfaces or handshakes or droplets spread when the reality was, it's in our breath. It's very unlikely to spread through surfaces. You didn't have to wash down the groceries. It's not like washing your hands and using hand sanitiser is a bad thing. But it's probably more important for the bacterial infections that occur in hospitals than it is for pandemic viruses that are mostly about the air we breathe," he said.

Image on the interview with Sutton helps illustrate the era’s debate over how the virus spread.

Between March 2020 and October 2021, Melbourne and broader Victoria endured six separate lockdowns, totaling 262 days under stay-at-home orders—the longest such lockdown in the world during the pandemic. Sutton said the public might someday decide that another lockdown is not acceptable, signaling a potential shift toward other mitigation strategies. "Maybe we will agree as a society that we never want to do that again," he said. "I'm okay with that. There are other ways to manage stuff. If we all wore masks and we all got vaccinated and we all kept distances without them being mandated. That's a potential path we can take." He acknowledged that children paid a high price during the pandemic, noting they were among the least at risk medically but bore the greatest constraints. "The children were constrained in their lives and that didn't benefit them as much as it benefited others. But those other people, by God, needed the support of everyone."

Sutton also recalled frequent moments when he considered stepping away from the role due to the pressure and the horror of the crisis. He described the pandemic period as a horror show and stressed the importance of planning and prevention to make future response and recovery easier. "There were moments during the pandemic when I wanted to quit. We don't want to talk about it much. The reality is we should do our utmost by continuing to focus on the planning and prevention so that the response and recovery bits are made easier," he said.