Coronavirus: Infections of Covid-19 skyrocket in Australia

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was forced to announce drastic new lockdown measures as the number of coronavirus cases in Australia continues to rise exponentially. Photo / Getty Images

NSW and Queensland have both reported a record number of new coronavirus cases overnight — 136 and 60 — while Victoria saw another 59.

As of Monday morning, total confirmed cases — based on a tally of numbers provided by health authorities in each state and territory — stands at 1609.

There are 669 in New South Wales, 355 in Victoria, 319 in Queensland, 100 in South Australia, 120 in Western Australia, 22 in Tasmania, 19 in the Australian Capital Territory and five in the Northern Territory.

Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe, left, arrives to outline measures the bank will take to support an economy rocked by coronavirus. Photo / AP

At least 69 have fully recovered.

Seven people have died — one in Western Australia and six in New South Wales.
NSW Chief Medical Officer Dr Kerry Chant said this morning 10 people are currently in intensive care. "It is incredibly important that the community adhere to the social distancing measures," she said.

"I would particularly like to urge young adults, whilst you may not be the group that (is at risk), it is really important that you play your role in adhering to the social distancing measures because we need to protect the most vulnerable at this important time."

In Queensland, one patient is currently in intensive care on a ventilator, with Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeannette Young describing their status as "unwell".

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said people were still not getting the message. "We had a case last week where a group of people, a dozen or so, went to a dinner party," he told reporters this morning.

"As best we can tell the dinner party started with one person who had the coronavirus. By the end of the dinner party almost everybody at the dinner party had the coronavirus."

Mr Andrews said the virus "spreads rapidly" and "if people simply behave as normal, if they don't take this seriously, if they act selfishly, then people will die".

"I can't be any clearer than that," he said.

It comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was forced to announce drastic new lockdown measures as the number of coronavirus cases in Australia continues to rise exponentially.

"Many of the cases that we have seen in the last few days have been from international travellers," Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy said last night.

"We've seen some irresponsible behaviour from people who were told to quarantine and have not. And they have spread the virus. We now have to be absolutely rigid. If you come back from anywhere, a cruise ship, a plane, and you come back to this country, you go home and you quarantine for two weeks, no exceptions. You are putting your fellow Australians at risk if you break that rule."

Prof Murphy said it was possible to "control and contain, bend and flatten the curve", but "every single Australian has to play their role in doing this."

"We have to save our vulnerable Australians from what could be, and we've seen this in other countries, fairly devastating impacts if we get a widespread pandemic in this country."

DEATH TOLL

Australia's first coronavirus fatality was on Sunday, March 1.

He was a 78-year-old Perth man who was among 163 Australians evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan and quarantined at Howard Springs in the Northern Territory.

The second death came on Tuesday, March 3. The 95-year-old woman was a resident at the Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Macquarie Park, in Sydney's north.

Two other residents of the same nursing home later died — an 82-year-old man on Sunday, March 8, followed by a 90-year-old woman on Saturday, March 14.

On Friday, March 13, a 77-year-old woman died in a Sydney hospital after recently arriving from Queensland. She had developed symptoms on the plane, was taken to hospital and died the same day.

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An 86-year-old man died in a Sydney hospital on Tuesday, March 17, making him the state's fifth death and the country's sixth.

On Thursday, March 19, an 81-year-old woman died in hospital, bringing the death toll to seven. NSW Health said she had close contact with another confirmed case at Ryde Hospital.

CORONAVIRUS IN AUSTRALIA

People in their 50s make up the greatest proportion of confirmed cases, followed by those in their 30s, 40s, 20s and 60s.

Far fewer people aged over 70 or under 20 have been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Where authorities have been able to determine the source of the infection, three times as many cases came from overseas travel as local transmission. The US and Italy have now overtaken China as the most common source country.

The first case of COVID-19 was detected on January 25 in Victoria.

The patient was a man from Wuhan, Hubei province — where the virus emerged late last year — who flew to Melbourne from Guangdong on January 19.
Three more cases were detected the same day in NSW.

All three were men who had recently returned from China — two had been in Wuhan and one had direct contact with a confirmed case from the virus epicentre.

Since then, the number of cases has risen exponentially.

NSW quickly became ground zero for the Australian outbreak, and now makes up nearly half of all cases in the country.

Experts fear that if Australia follows the same trend as similar countries where infections have doubled around every six days, there could be as many as 6000 by early April.