Last week the chair of the New England Division of General Practice, Dr Maree Puxty, told the Armidale Express that getting our community double vaccinated and maintaining mask-wearing in public and social distancing was crucial to managing the opening up of society after lockdown.

Dr Maree Puxty has been a GP since 1993 and is also the chair of the Hunter New England Central Coast Primary Health Network Rural Clinical Council, one of the practice owners of West Armidale Medical Centre, and a senior lecturer in rural health for the University of New England School of Rural Medicine.

She said the ongoing problem of the doctor shortage and the aging population of medical professionals across New England could not be fixed overnight. It was essential we get as many people vaccinated as possible to prevent an overwhelming demand for the hospitalisation of patients with COVID-19, Dr Puxty said.

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When Mr Joyce came to Armidale last Friday to meet with small business owners, the Express asked him if he was concerned about the threat COVID-19 posed to his electorates' health facilities and if the federal government had done high-level planning to support the states' stretched health systems.

Mr Joyce said it all came back to double vaccinating to prevent overburdening hospitals' intensive care units.

"Once we get to a point when 80 per cent of people have been double vaccinated, then we can basically open the show up, and that will be around mid to the end of October," Mr Joyce said.

"Then we will have more vaccines around than people who want to get vaccinated, and we can say if you choose not to be vaccinated, that is your choice, we won't be pushing for any passports, but you must accept the risk.

"The vast majority will not be affected, some will get sick, some will get very sick, and some people will die."

Mr Joyce said once lockdowns ease, there will be a 'mini pandemic, and it will be amongst the people who aren't vaccinated. Those people will get sick, he says, but the effect on the health system could also have dire consequences for those who are vaccinated.

"To get as few people dying as possible, we need as many people inoculated as possible," he said.

"Otherwise, the Armidale ICU beds will fill up with people who have COVID, and then there will be a car crash up the road, and there will be a 14-year-old boy injured, and the ICU beds will be full, and he will die - and that is not just. So to play your part - don't argue against epidemiology."

But the rate of opening up and the double vax numbers that trigger it differ between the medical professional and the politician.

Dr Puxty says most epidemiologists recommend waiting until we reach levels of 90 per cent of the community double vaccinated, and she thinks we should open up gradually and continue to use periodic stay at home and local government area isolation strategies to limit the spread of the virus.

"I'm not sure things will ever return to how they were two years ago," she said.

Mr Joyce said the federal government is guided by the Doherty Institute report and wants to open up as soon as double vaccination numbers reach 80 per cent because the economy cannot sustain a prolonged lockdown.

"If we make it too high, then you're going to go broke, businesses in Armidale are already going broke, and we also have the issue of mental health - we've seen an increase in the suicide rate during these lockdowns," he said.

"You've got to balance that off, and we've been advised that 80 per cent is the figure - it is a complete juggle. Test, vaccinate, isolate is part of the Doherty plan, but shutting whole areas down will not happen because the economy just can't sustain it. We can't afford to pay for it, and the impact on mental health is becoming a bigger concern in some areas than the possibility of dying from COVID."

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Mr Joyces' comments came the day after the Doherty Institute Director of Epidemiology, Jodie McVernon, told an NSW parliamentary hearing on Thursday that modelling by the institute used when setting targets of 70 and 80 per cent vaccination coverage for reopening did not reflect the true virulence of the Delta strain.

New international research shows the severity of health outcomes from the Delta strain is worse than the original Alpha strain, and future Doherty modelling will now reflect this, she said.

If the severity from Delta is about twice what was originally assumed, the numbers of hospitalisations of unvaccinated people will probably be double what has been predicted, Professor McVernon agreed.

Retired Tamworth GP Lyn Allen also says a high double vaccination rate is the only thing that will prevent a crisis in the health system. Dr Allen told Australian Community Media that doctors were not the only health staff we couldn't do without in a pandemic.

"We need more than more doctors; we need more everything," she said.

"I think that if coronavirus comes in our area, we don't have enough trained staff, we don't have enough intensive care beds. By trained staff, I don't mean the paramedics; I mean the nurses and the doctors, to handle it."

Dr Allen said a pandemic outbreak would put even more stress on an already stretched system and could see some patients triaged out.

"Just because we've got a pandemic doesn't mean everything else doesn't happen as well," she said.

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