At 12.39am on February 1, epidemiologist Jodie McVernon emailed Australia’s chief medical officer: The new coronavirus had broken out of Wuhan, China.
The professor was up late again, talking to a worldwide network of modellers convened by the World Health Organisation – and the new virus was spreading from human to human.
She had been dialing into the meetings since January 17 and she knew the threat was worse than anyone in Australia realised.
Shocking scenes of people collapsing in the streets of Wuhan or being welded into their apartments by the Chinese authorities were far away, remote and obscure to most Australians who had no idea their country was about to be shut down.
In January just a handful of modelling experts realised how bad the new coronavirus spread could get after it broke out of Wuhan, China
Epidemiologist, Professor Jodie McVernon on QandA. The professor sent an urgent email to chief medical officer Brendan Murphy warning the new virus was spreading human-to-human
Just a handful of modellers around the world knew the coronavirus outbreak was going to be bad – and that it had seeded itself around China and from there it was already flying around the world.
Australia’s porous borders, open to mass migration and tourism, were about to be crossed by 100,000 Chinese students preparing to take up their Semester One studies at university.
All the ingredients were set for a disaster.
Australia’s stretched hospital system had no capacity to deal with a large influx of new patients needing oxygen to its intensive care units.
The nation had its index case on January 25: A Chinese national became Australia’s first confirmed coronavirus patient after flying from Wuhan to Melbourne.
Through the last week of January, the cases kept flying in.
Somehow, with all the ingredients set for a disaster, Australia managed to pull off one of the greatest coronavirus escapes in the world.
Australia’s great escape began with that one urgent late-night email from Professor Jodie McVernon to Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy: the virus has broken out of Wuhan, it’s spreading person-to-person.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison acted swiftly, shutting Australia’s borders and requiring all returning citizens to go into mandatory 14-day quarantine
Soldiers escorted returning travellers directly from the airport to city hotels for their mandatory 14-day quarantine. Pictured: travellers in Sydney on March 29
Professor Murphy had similar warnings from the National Incident Room, Australia’s federal health department crisis centre, so he knew he must act directly.
He immediately alerted Health Minister Greg Hunt who briefed the Prime Minister.
Australia shut the border to China that afternoon.
Extraordinary efforts began as the Federal Government chartered Qantas flights to evacuate Australians from Wuhan, taking them to Christmas Island and Darwin to quarantine.
On February 27, as the World Health Organisation told the world to keep its borders open to travel and trade, Scott Morrison declared the coronavirus outbreak would become a pandemic and activated Australia’s emergency response plan.
Returning travellers ushered into the InterContinental Hotel, Sydney, by soldiers and police for quarantine. The scenes were surreal – but they saved Australia from being hit like the U.S.
It was not until March 11 that the WHO finally admitted the pandemic.
Mr Morrison’s pro-active stance saved Australia from becoming the next Italy or Spain – disaster zones where doctors had to decide who would live and who would die as they dispensed limited supplies of oxygen to patients stacked hallways and corridors.
But it was not enough.
On March 19, the cruise ship Ruby Princess docked in Sydney with 158 sick passengers on board after an aborted New Zealand cruise.
When 2,700 passengers disembarked they flew back to their homes around Australia, many taking the virus with them.
By the end of March, Australia had 4,500 cases, the majority of whom brought it with them from overseas.
ABC health guru Dr Norman Swan warned the nation that hospital intensive care units would be completely overwhelmed in just 17 days unless the coronavirus spread was brought under control.
With no natural immunity the virus would have ripped through the population if left unchecked, overwhelming hospitals and potentially killing up to 150,000 people.
The nation had to be prepared for the worst case scenario, so the Department of Home Affairs began procuring cold storage facilities for bodies in case the morgues ran out of space.
NSW Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant told the Sydney Morning Herald that the virus modelling was based on an unchecked pandemic.
‘It was never going to be acceptable to allow that spread,’ she said.
Surfers pictured at Bondi Beach on March 20 as the coronavirus hit and police began enforcing coronavirus rules, closing the beaches when they became too crowded
Australia took its lockdown seriously: police patrolled Bondi Beach in April and arrested a local resident for allegedly ignoring signs saying the area was closed due to coronavirus
The Morrison Government brought down the hammer, taking steps to stop the spread that were all but unimaginable just a month earlier.
Australia shut its borders on March 20 to all external countries.
Only returning citizens and permanent residents were allowed to re-enter Australia and mandatory 14-day quarantine was introduced.
Stunned Australians saw army personnel and police at the airport escorting people to their hotels from the airport on arrival.
They had never seen anything like it in their lives, but Australia co-operated with the travel ban.
Sydney’s iconic beaches were closed including Bondi Beach, and police arrested and fined those who broke social distancing health orders.
On March 13 the Grand Prix was cancelled, horrifying motorsport fans, and the entire football season had to be played in stadiums without crowds.
Australians accepted their lockdown as bars, clubs, cinemas, places of worship, casinos and gyms were all closed.
Police at a border checkpoint in Broadmeadows, Melbourne on July 2. Australians had never seen checkpoints and border closures until the pandemic
Moorabbin Oval, known today as RSEA Park, home of the St Kilda Saints Football Club in Melbourne, Victoria – empty. Pictured on August 26 during Melbourne’s second lockdown
Melbourne’s usually bustling central Docklands area pictured deserted on August 26
They were reassured by Federal Government coronavirus aid that ensured their bills would be paid, the mortgage repayments met and their jobs could be kept on ice until the emergency ended.
State and Federal leaders took their cues from medical experts.
With the help of a co-ordinating ‘war-time’ national cabinet, political parties in all states and territories largely set aside their differences and presented a unified response to the nation.
Internal borders between states were closed for the first time in history, with soldiers and police staffing border checkpoints.
Australia began to flatten the curve of infections and slowly got control of the spread.
Lockdowns began to ease – until disaster struck in Victoria.
Premier Daniel Andrews has been heavily criticised for allowing private security firms to be put in charge of hotel quarantine in the state.
Sloppy measures by the security firms led to a horrific outbreak which peaked in August at 725 new infections per day.
As the rest of the nation opened up, Victorians suffered one of the harshest lockdowns in the world for months eventually eliminating the virus in November.
Idle passenger jets parked at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne, Victoria, on August 26. Shutting the international and state borders to travel helped Australia beat coronavirus
Professor McVernon said it was hard to talk to colleagues overseas about being in lockdown in Melbourne with five cases a day.
‘The idea that we would get to a (near) elimination state here didn’t seem plausible at the beginning,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘What we take for granted now as our expected normal is so far apart from theirs.’
But Australia is now the envy of the world, free from harsh lockdowns and almost entirely free of the coronavirus while the rest of the globe falls apart.
The United States recorded 15.2 million cases and 288,906 deaths as of Sunday night according to stastistics website Worldometers.
CNN reported more than a million new cases were diagnosed in just the five days from Tuesday to Saturday.
Hospital space is running out, ambulance crews are exhausted and 33 million people are now locked down in California during the holiday season.
Worldwide, 67.5 million people have been infected and 1.5 million have now died in the most destructive pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu.
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