Focus to contain spread of virus

AUSTRALIA will be unable to keep out new cases of coronavirus and the best that can be done is to slow the onslaught, authorities say.

The nation’s Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy had a sobering statement for Australians yesterday.

“It is no longer possible to absolutely prevent new cases coming in.”

Efforts are now focused on quickly isolating newly infected people, dissuading Australians from heading to virus hot spots, and in the case of Iran using a travel ban to slow down that route of infection.

Australia has had 29 confirmed cases – 15 Chinese tourists or residents who had visited China, 10 passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, and four people who recently returned from Iran.

Fifteen of those cases have been cleared.

Australia also recorded its first coronavirus death at the weekend when James Kwan, 78, died in a Perth hospital.

He and his wife were among evacuees from the Diamond Princess, with both falling ill after being taken to Darwin for two weeks in quarantine.

Health Minister Greg Hunt explained yesterday why Australia had imposed a travel ban on arrivals from Iran, but not from other high-risk countries including South Korea and Italy, where cases doubled to over 1000 in one day.

He said he’d accepted the advice of chief medical officers including Professor Murphy, who said the outbreaks in Italy and South Korea were not considered as risky as Iran’s because they were contained and localised.

Prof Murphy said it was a different situation in Iran, where alarm bells had been ringing after more than 50 deaths from about 1000 cases.

“We had a very high index suspicion that the caseload in Iran was much greater than being reported, because of the death rate,” he said.

WE HAD A VERY HIGH INDEX SUSPICION THAT THE CASELOAD IN IRAN WAS MUCH GREATER THAN BEING REPORTED

“In the case of Iran ... a travel ban is worth doing. It’s a way of slowing things down. In Italy and South Korea ... a travel ban was not justified.”

Australia has, however, upgraded its travel advice for Italy. Australians intending to travel there have been told to exercise a high degree of caution across the entire country, and to reconsider the need to travel to 10 virus-affected towns in Italy’s north.

Globally there have been more than 88,000 infections and almost 3000 deaths spanning 67 countries and regions.

The health emergency has seen stockmarkets plunge across the world.