Covirus 19 coronavirus: Why do Australians not spread viruses in hair salons or supermarkets?

It is one of the great mysteries of Australia’s Covid-19 experiment: Despite fears that supermarkets and hairdressers may demonstrate a high risk of spreading the virus, no major outbreaks have been detected.

When pubs, clubs and restaurants closed seven weeks ago, the fact that hairdressers were allowed to remain open seemed to run counter to prevailing wisdom.

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Social distancing was impossible and hairdressers who remained open often wore little as personal protective equipment and gloves.

When the Prime Minister first allowed hairdressing salons to continue trading, he laid down a 30-minute rule, which was quickly derided and extended.

Some hairdressing salons begged to be able to close, fearing that the risk to their staff and clients was too great.

But in the weeks that followed, many hairdressers stayed open and there were apparently few outbreaks. In Denmark, hairdressing salons were recently reopened with little sign that it is causing a further increase in cases.

• Covid19.govt.nz – The official government Covid-19 advisory website

Supermarkets have also remained open with no signs that they are spreading the virus, despite many workers not wearing masks or gloves.

Why is this so?

Australian Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly admits it has been a learning curve. But preliminary evidence suggests that prolonged and close contact is the key to the spread of the virus.

This is most likely to occur in homes and care facilities for the elderly, which is where the virus is most widely spread.

It is also likely to occur at weddings and parties where large gatherings are held for extended periods.

“We learn things every day,” said Professor Kelly.

“We know this is an infectious disease, that is pretty clear. It is a virus, it is transmitted from person to person and we know that it is quite infectious.”

“We also know that this infection is more likely to spread in homes. Therefore, it is among people who live in the same house, for example, family members.

“And again from adult to adult rather than child to adult. In household terms, it is due to close and prolonged proximity to someone who is infectious with others who are susceptible to the virus. So household infectivity is the most prominent one around the world. “

That raises natural fears about the reopening of schools, as large groups of children will gather on campuses across Australia.

But Professor Kelly is convinced that medical advice on this risk is clear.

“It is absolutely clear now that it is less infectious in children. Children are less likely to spread the virus among themselves, or even from children to adults,” he said.

“They are also less likely to become infected and less likely to have a serious infection and very, very rarely ends up in intensive care and at the more severe end of the spectrum. Therefore, children generally do not have as much of a problem in terms of this virus. “

Doctors are also learning more about when the virus is most likely to pass on to friends, family and colleagues.

“Most of that infectiousness occurs in the first five days of illness,” he said.

“So most of all, infection is when someone is obviously sick, they know they are sick, and they are passing it from person to person. Much less before they got sick. So now it’s pretty clear,” he said.

Staying outdoors is also much safer than staying indoors, raising some questions about the original prohibitions on reading a book in Sydney’s parks.

“There has been a well-documented case of a stadium, a Champions League soccer match in northern Italy when Italy was right in the middle of its epidemic, where there was an outbreak in that scenario,” he said.

“But aside from that, very little in relation to the outdoors: people who infect each other outdoors.

“Therefore, they are now strengthening our resolve in terms of our general principles as to how we are going to see the reopening of society, the reopening of the economy in a safe way for Covid.”

But infectious disease expert Professor Peter Collignon cautioned that we shouldn’t consider hairdressing salons, schools or supermarkets as magical spaces where transmission should not occur.

Supermarkets, for example, were linked to the spread of Covid-19 in Italy and the United States.

The most likely reason it hasn’t happened here is simply because of low community transmission rates in Australia. That is, cases where the infected person has no known contact with another Covid-19 victim.

If a second or third outbreak occurred in Australia, there is no reason to believe that infections could not occur in supermarkets and hair salons.

“Anyone can get it from anyone. But it is proportional to the amount of time you spend with someone,” said Professor Collignon.

“Hairdressers, we have opened them and they are obviously less than 1.5 meters away. But it is also a function of the fact that we have very low rates of community broadcasts.”

“If you take out the cruises, the people coming back from abroad and their close contacts, there are less than 10 percent of the cases in Australia that are community broadcasts.”

“If we were like New York, I would be closing hair salons.”