Coronavirus: Increase in COVID-19 cases slows to just 1pc a day as curve conquered

Australia has seen an increase in coronavirus cases of less than 1 per cent per day for seven straight days.

Medics perform COVID-19 tests at a drive-through testing center at Bondi Beach. Picture: AFP

Australia has seen an increase in coronavirus cases of less than 1 per cent per day for seven straight days, showing a “genuine flattening” of the infection curve, Health Minister Greg Hunt has declared.

Mr Hunt said that while there was “more work to be done”, with 53 cases confirmed in Australia in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the reduction in case numbers was “an important national achievement”.

“What it means is, we now have a sustained and genuine flattening of the curve,” he said.

“There is more work to be done — 53 cases in the last 24 hours, ­admittedly some of them within the quarantine hotels — says we have to maintain what we’re doing, but what we’re doing is working.”

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt has confirmed Australia’s coronavirus efforts are proving successful. Picture: AAP

Mr Hunt said there had been 411,000 COVID-19 tests in Australia, and described testing, contact-tracing and social isolation as “our strongest weapons” against the virus.

“Social isolation, although it’s difficult, although it’s challenging, is extremely important in the fight against coronavirus,” he said.

“It’s helping to bring down the rate of transmission.”

Australia has 6586 confirmed cases of coronavirus.

The nation’s COVID-19 death toll has risen to 72, following the confirmation on Sunday of the deaths of a man in his 80s in a Melbourne hospital, and an 83-year-old Queensland man in quarantine in Sydney, who had been a passenger on the Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship.

There were 184 Australians in hospital with coronavirus on Sunday, including 51 in intensive care, of whom 33 were on ventilators.

In NSW, 10 of the state’s 21 new cases of COVID-19 were linked to the nursing home where a 93-year-old man died on Saturday. Three more staff and six more residents of Anglicare’s Newmarch House tested positive, taking the total number of cases at the aged care home in western Sydney to 39 — with more than a quarter of the home’s 102 residents now infected, alongside 13 staff.

Three of Victoria’s nine new patients were in mandatory hotel quarantine, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in hotel quarantine in the state to 42.

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews said the state’s numbers for the weekend — which included the confirmation of 17 cases on Saturday — had come after 3522 tests on Friday, following a significant broadening of testing criteria.

“So we’re looking more, we’re finding cases and that gives us confidence that we’re being very successful in terms of suppressing this virus,” Mr Andrews told Sky News.

Victoria Police, meanwhile, ­arrested and charged an 18-year-old from Melbourne’s northwest after he was allegedly caught breaching social-distancing rules five times in 10 days.

During one breach, Sunbury man Jack Attwell allegedly told police he had COVID-19 and would cough on them.

Mr Attwell faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday charged with one count of reckless conduct endangering life and five counts of persistent contravention of stage-three COVID-19 directions. 

Tasmania recorded seven new cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, Queensland five and Western Australia one.

One of the Tasmanian cases was a resident at the Melaleuca Home for the Aged in East Devonport, while the other six were associated with the cluster of cases at two hospitals in the state’s northwest region.