Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shown a reluctance to resort to the tight lockdowns and near-complete border closures that had defined Australia’s response to the pandemic.

Instead he is urging “personal responsibility” — a call on residents to take precautions themselves without relying on “the heavy hand of government”.

In a Christmas message, Morrison said, “This pandemic, it continues to buffet us — the Omicron variant is just the latest challenge that we face — but together, always together and only together, do we keep pushing through.”

Nationwide daily cases surpassed the 9,000 mark for the first time this week, mainly in the two most populous states of New South Wales and Victoria.

Exactly how many of the infections are Omicron is uncertain. As of this past Monday, nearly 400 cases of the strain had been sequenced, according to a local task force monitoring variants of concern.

But there are fears that the variant — thought to be more infectious due to its high number of mutations — could lead to a far bigger explosion in cases.

“Omicron is anticipated to become the dominant variant in Australia soon,” the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee said on Wednesday. “There (also) remains considerable community transmission of the delta variant,” it added, warning of the potential for “increased demands” on the health system.

On Thursday, NSW and Victoria reintroduced some virus curbs, including rules to wear masks indoors.

Dominic Perrottet, New South Wales’ new pro-business premier, had only just lifted most pandemic restrictions on Dec 15, as Omicron began to spread.

From this coming Monday, hospitality venues will have to limit customers to one per 2 sqm. Other precautions include a requirement to capture QR codes on smartphones or sign into venues, with dancing and singing banned.

Morrison, meanwhile, has appeared to downplay the danger, likening virus safeguards to what Australians do to protect themselves from sunburns.

“Mask wearing in indoor spaces in public areas is of course highly recommended whether it’s mandated or not,” the prime minister said on Thursday. “In the same way as we go into the summer season, people will be slapping on the hat and slapping on the sunscreen.”

After keeping Australia largely sealed for months, even for outbound travellers, the government reopened to vaccinated foreign workers and students on Dec 15 despite the Omicron threat.

With Morrison struggling in the polls — which consistently suggest his Liberal-National coalition would lose the next election to Labor — political considerations may be in play.

The current crisis also follows a spring season of sometimes violent protests against lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne, and with a small segment of the population strongly opposed to vaccination.

Professor Alexandra Martiniuk, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, thinks the Morrison government’s “personal responsibility” Covid strategy may be intended to appease anti-vax and anti-lockdown groups.

“It’s the only hypothesis I’ve come up with,” she said. “We know when elections loom, decision-making changes. And we know that there are certain populations who have been protesting around the world, while they make up a small proportion of the total population, they’re very loud. It really is the squeaky wheel getting the grease.”

Martiniuk said conspiracy theories in pandemics are nothing new. The difference today is how quickly and widely such messages can spread, due to social media.

This, coupled with the nature of Covid-19, creates a potent formula for misinformation and anger over restrictions.

“Smallpox is a great example,” she said. “It was very visual, you could see someone was very diseased, and so people believed the disease was there, they could see it. … but Covid falls into the category of extremely challenging because some people are asymptomatic, some people very mild symptoms, and some people die.”

Australia has still weathered the pandemic well, holding total deaths to around 2,200. Over 75% of the total population has been inoculated with two doses, and boosters are underway.

But fresh projection modeling has raised alarm in the local press, suggesting that if Australia did nothing, daily cases could soar to 200,000 in the coming weeks. The model by the Doherty Institute also said hospitalisations could reach 4,000 a day, with 8,000 to 10,000 patients needing intensive care.

Morrison assured local media that this is not what the government actually expects. “The modeling that’s been reported is a very unlikely, extreme case scenario that assumes that nobody does anything; nobody gets boosters, there are no changes that take place, no one exercises common sense,” he was quoted as saying.

Martiniuk explained that “good models provide a 95% confidence interval — confidence about the range of possible scenarios.”

“You have a sense of, ‘OK, it could be as bad as this or it could be as good as this.’ … but it’s all just likelihoods.”

Meanwhile, as Australia braces for the possible worst-case scenario, there are some signs of pressure on the health sector.

An Australian government website on Saturday showed just under 1,000 people hospitalised with the virus. That number is still a far cry from the modeling.

But NSW’s public health system has furloughed 1,400 workers exposed to Covid-19 and is struggling to find staff.

Martiniuk said she recently spoke with a junior doctor in Sydney “who oversaw multiple patients because several wards were missing many, many health workers”.

“She’s been very, very, strong throughout the pandemic, not really that worried and thinking everything was going OK,” Martiniuk recalled. “But (the doctor) said, ‘OK, now we’ve basically got a staffing problem.'”

Martiniuk pointed to a report from the UK — where the virus has also surged — of a major hospital missing 40% of its staff.

“That’s what’s coming to us potentially. If nothing else, even if people are going to die of omicron, or even if not that many get hospitalised, we’re going to have a health worker problem” due to the need to isolate exposed staff. She noted this could lead to a shortage of personnel to deal with other health emergencies.

How all this plays out in the next few months could have significant implications on Morrison’s prospects for reelection.