[INTERVIEW] Korea is outlier on face masks: Australian health expert

Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, speaks during a session at the 2022 World Bio Summit held in Seoul, Wednesday. Courtesy of Ministry of Health and Welfare

COVID-19 pandemic will persist in 2023, but with less severe waves: Lewin

By Lee Hyo-jin

Korea is an outlier when it comes to the mask mandate and people's tendency to wear face masks, says Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

"I've been travelling to a lot of countries and Korea is an outlier on masks. I'd be very interested to know if it is making a big difference to your numbers (of infections)," the Australian infectious disease specialist said in an interview with The Korea Times, Wednesday, during the 2022 World Bio Summit held in Seoul.

Lewin is the inaugural director of the Melbourne-based Doherty Institute, which was the first facility to isolate and share the SARS-CoV-2 virus outside of China in January 2020, and has played a major role in the global response to the pandemic.

She further said that she was quite fascinated to see Koreans wear masks outdoors consistently ― even though the outdoor mask rule was lifted in September ― unlike Australians who were keen to ditch face masks. The mask mandate indoors is still in place in Korea.

"Masks have been very helpful in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, but their efficacy with Omicron is a little less clear in a highly vaccinated population, which Korea is," she said.

In recent weeks, Australia ― with a population of 26.1 million and territory 76 times the size of South Korea ― has been doing away with its pandemic restrictions. Virus carriers are now "recommended" to isolate for five days, and the mask mandate indoors was lifted except for in certain environments such as healthcare and hospital settings as well as elderly care, disability service and mental health residential facilities.

The Australian government's decision to lift the mask rule, which was overall positively received by the public, did not lead to an uptick of infections there, Lewin noted.

People wearing masks walk on the streets of Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul, Sept. 26, the day when the mask mandate outdoors was fully lifted. Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han

"Many governments are moving away from trying to reduce infections, and rather focusing on reducing hospitalizations and deaths, which means making sure people are vaccinated and boosted," she said.

Lewin views that if the overall strategy is to reduce hospitalizations and deaths then "mask wearing may not be giving you the biggest bang for your buck."

She also advised Korea swiftly to expand and put more attention on influenza vaccinations, explaining that her country had grappled with a "twindemic" of a severe, early flu season coupled with a surge in Omicron cases during the last few months.

"We had a lot of Omicron infections in July and August. And we also had a lot of influenza at that time, which you will be facing now as you go into winter," she said. In addition to free influenza vaccines, she underlined the importance of public awareness around not going to work when sick, and of wearing a mask when one has symptoms.

Meanwhile, she was cautiously optimistic about how the pandemic situation will develop in 2023, given that the world is now equipped with the necessary tools to minimize the impact of the coronavirus.

"There's a lot of uncertainty, but I would predict that the waves will be less severe over time, with less impact on our health system," she said.

"Vaccination has definitely broken the link between infection and disease. So even when we see infections, we see less disease. But if we see a new variant that gives you lots and lots of infections, we will still get a big burden for the hospitals," she said.

And thus, now is not the time to de-invest and stop surveillance, she said, "Every country needs to do their work to report in their new variants so we know what's happening around the world."

More investment needed in therapeutics

While the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the development of vaccine production, the same cannot be said for antiviral treatments. Vaccines became available by the end of 2020, but antiviral therapeutics arrived much later at the end of 2021.

Lewin, who viewed that up to four million deaths could have been averted if effective treatments like Pfizer's Paxlovid had been available within 6 months of the onset of COVID-19, stressed that treatments should be brought to the market more swiftly and at lower cost.

When asked why it took so long for antivirals to arrive, she counted several reasons, such as the complexity of the coronavirus and the lack of investment in that area. Whereas about $137 billion was invested in the development of vaccines on a global scale, only $7 billion went into therapeutics.

"We should think of it (therapeutics) like an extra layer of security on top of the other things that we can do to minimize the impact of a new pandemic," Lewin said.

Against this backdrop, in August, her institute launched the Cumming Global Center for pandemic therapeutics, with the aim of enabling the rapid design and testing of new therapeutics and their delivery to the community within months of a future pandemic outbreak.