COVID-19: 15m Aussies could catch virus within months

Australians refusing to take social distancing seriously need to grasp just how quickly coronavirus is spreading as an expert predicts more than half the population are likely to be infected.

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Fifteen million Australians, more than half the population, could have coronavirus within four months unless the public gets serious about stopping the spread.

A La Trobe University forecaster has predicted “it was not unreasonable” for that level of infection to occur in the absence of any attempt to control the disease.

It was too early to tell how big a dent efforts to close businesses and encourage social distancing would have on that number, Dr Joel Miller, a mathematical modeller specialising in infectious diseases said.

Many Australian are ignoring the advice on social distancing. Picture: Gary Ramage

“It’s definitely going to make a difference. Is it going to be enough to prevent the disease spreading? We don’t have hard enough data,” he said.

Unlike Italy, Australia had acted ahead of the curve but the more effective lockdown policies of China were not something we could enact here, he said.

The public needed to grasp the concept of exponential increases in infection to understand why they needed to stop going to the beach and hanging out in cafes and bars, he said.

Italy had 800 COVID-19 cases per day on March 10 when strong interventions were imposed but cases numbers continued to grow at 15-20 per cent a day to reach 6500 new cases per day in the following 12 days.

This was because it took five days to two weeks for people who were infected to come down with the disease.

It was almost two weeks after draconian lockdown policies were enacted that case numbers started to fall and in the meantime hospitals were overwhelmed, thousands died, with those aged over 60 were refused treatment when the health system couldn’t cope.

A ranger on Bondi Beac,h which has been closed to the public over COVID-19. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Australian Medical Association NSW president Dr Kean-Seng Lim said COVID-19 cases were currently doubling every three days in NSW.

“If isolation policies are successful we are hoping to see a reduction in community transmission in two to three weeks,” he said.

As the virus continues to spread health workers received welcome news that most people will soon be able to have a doctors consultation over the phone.

The government announced it was working with doctors to extend Medicare rebates for all medical consultations including those provided by nurses that were conducted over the phone as part of measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 in doctors’ waiting rooms.

And from Monday it moved to provide Medicare rebates for telehealth consultations to all vulnerable general practitioners and other vulnerable health professionals including those aged at least 70 years old, indigenous and aged at least 50 years old, pregnant women, a parent of a child under 12 months, with compromised immune systems, with a chronic medical condition that results in increased risk from coronavirus infection.

Originally published as COVID-19: 15m Aussies could catch virus within months