It’s official: Australia is about to be smashed by another COVID wave just in time for summer.

Meanwhile, our vaccine immunity is waning and very few of us bother with hand sanitiser and masks anymore.

Instead, we’re busy planning Christmas catch-ups and New Year’s soirees – hoping for a chance to party like it’s 2019.

But the next few weeks will determine whether we celebrate in isolation or with our loved ones.

Experts and health officials have one piece of advice that could prevent COVID ruining all our plans: Mask up.

Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in Epidemiology, Catherine Bennett, told The New Daily the public should be aware of the rising cases.

“It was almost inevitable, you know, we knew we were going to see future waves,” she said.

On Friday, NSW confirmed just under 20,000 cases had been recorded this week. Premier Dominic Perrottet said his state was “open and free” but advised people to wear masks while in hospitals or aged care facilities.

Victoria reported 16,636 cases this week, with an average of 274 people hospitalised every day. There were also 41 deaths.

Queensland recorded 5828 new cases in the last week. It has upped its alert level under its traffic-light pandemic response from green to amber, saying people should be alert, but not alarmed.

Queenslanders are urged to wear masks around vulnerable people, indoors and on public transport – but there are no mandates.

South Australia reported 6867 cases this week.

Tweet from @healthgovau

Professor Bennett said that even though governments were not imposing restrictions, people should take responsibility into their own hands.

“The message is the same right across the country, every state and territory is seeing this rise,” she said.

“And every state and territory health department is advising people to just step up those precautions.

“If you want to [have a] safe Christmas and holiday, what we do over the next few weeks is going to be critical and make all the difference.”

Reasons for COVID wave

Professor of biostatistics at the University of South Australia, Adrian Esterman, says there are a few reasons why we’re seeing an uptick in cases.

For one, all health measures are gone, leaving us “wide open” to any new variants. While vaccines do a “good job”, the majority of Australians  have waning immunity thanks to the jab, or from previous infections.

Also, we’re now seeing new variants arriving in Australia – ones that are more transmissible and can easily evade our immune response, Professor Esterman said.

Tweet from @profesterman

“So you can see this is a perfect storm,” he said.

He said there has been talk of the wave starting now not being as high as the previous BA.5 wave and much shorter.

“The reason why people are saying that is because that’s what we’ve seen in other countries like Singapore and France,” he said, adding Australia might be able to cope with the coming wave, but we can’t know for sure at this stage.

The good thing is we’re not in 2020. It’s 2022 and we have a few tools in our arsenal to help fight COVID-19.

In addition to vaccines and natural immunity, we now have anti-viral medication which is seeing some great results in treating COVID.

The trick is to access the anti-viral medication as soon as possible, Professor Bennett said, saying data shows they are preventing people from getting seriously ill.

Without mandates, people are being asked to mask up.

Mask mandates

Although health officials recommend that people wear masks, Professor Esterman questions how many people will do it, which is why masks mandates being reintroduced would be “sensible”.

He says they could even just be mandated in certain situations like on public transport and in healthcare settings.

While people need to get on with their lives, there’s still a need to protect vulnerable people in the community, he said.

People should be concerned about a decent number of people suffering from long-term health problems thanks to COVID-19, he said.

However, Professor Bennett believes mask mandates have served their purpose, but have become redundant.

“It won’t keep working, people will ignore the mandates as they did. The rules weren’t working either,” she said,

“It’s really trying to change [and] get people tuned into the public health message, to know when their risk is rising and that’s when to wear a mask.”

People should also get their booster shots if they haven’t had them already, both Professor Bennett and Professor Esterman said.

Time to step up

Without governments intervening, it’s time people stepped up, Professor Esterman said.

“If the government isn’t going to protect people, we’ve got to protect ourselves,” he said, adding he will always wear a mask while going shopping.

While the lack of restrictions and mandates might suggest the pandemic is over, Professor Esterman says it is not.

Even though case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths have gone down, they’re just about to go up again.

“This isn’t normal and it’s a very nasty virus,” he said.