Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton published a co-authored opinion piece in the Australian Medical Journal, criticising Australia’s national plan for missing an explicit “recovery phase” to address long-term health and economic impacts of the pandemic on Nov. 15. The commissioned article was co-authored with professor Stephen Duckett from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT. The recovery phase often comes as the last phase of a disaster and serves as the period to restore aspects of the disaster’s impact and return the local economy to normalcy.It is usually implemented once the impacted region has achieved a degree of physical, environmental, economic, and social stability. Whilst there’s no explicit recovery phase within the timeline, the graded loosening of restrictions is aimed at recovering stability; socially and economically. Sutton and Duckett in the article said that the recovery phase is needed to address economic effects and manage mental health impacts. “COVID-19 …