The state’s top decision-maker through the world’s longest lockdown has opened up about the missteps made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brett Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer from March 2019 to July 2023, reflected on ineffective measures during an interview with Neil Mitchell.
He said cleaning surfaces was likely pointless.
“Touching elbows was probably never necessary. They’re the things that we learn as we go,” Professor Sutton admitted.
“And 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 acknowledged some restrictions were so tough, and in hindsight unnecessary, that Australians may never tolerate another lockdown.
Between March 2020 and October 2021, Victoria endured six separate lockdowns, amounting to 262 days under stay-at-home orders – the longest anywhere in the world.
“Maybe we will agree as a society that we never want to do that [lockdown] 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.”
Sutton said children suffered the most despite being at the “least at risk”.
“Absolutely we should recognise that they made a significant sacrifice when they were least at risk, at medical risk,” he said.
“They made a sacrifice for people who were most at risk, people on chemotherapy, people with immune suppression, people who are very elderly and in nursing homes.
“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.”
He also described the pandemic as a personal ordeal.
“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,” Sutton said, admitting there were moments he considered quitting.
Sutton resigned as Chief Health Officer in 2023 and is now director of health and biosecurity at CSIRO. He had previously acknowledged that evidence on COVID-19 was “sometimes a best guess” and conceded he sometimes failed to provide clear explanations.
During the pandemic, Sutton unexpectedly became a “sex symbol”, amassing thousands of female admirers dubbed the “Suttonettes,” who nicknamed him “Sexysutton,” “Chief Swoon Officer,” “Dr Brett McHunk,” and “CHOttie.”
His latest reflections follow the release of emails, made public after a four-and-a-half-year legal battle, showing Victoria’s controversial 8pm–5am curfew in 2020 was not based on health advice but instead imposed by Cabinet.
An email exchange between Sutton and then public health commander Finn Romanes confirmed the measure was not recommended by health experts – though they later supported it for its effect on limiting transmission of the virus.
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