Warning of nationwide coronavirus clusters (paywalled)
Natasha Robinson
The Australian
March 7, 2020
A doctor who helped spearhead Australia’s fight against HIV/AIDS has warned clusters of coronavirus cases will soon spring up across the country and hundreds of people are likely already infected.
John Dwyer, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of NSW, said the nation must move from a strategy of containment to a focus on protecting the most vulnerable, including the elderly and those with chronic diseases.
“We are definitely going to have a pandemic in Australia,” Professor Dwyer said. “This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
The number of people in Australia with the coronavirus rose to 63 on Friday, with three new cases in NSW.
Nearly 3000 Queenslanders have been told to self-isolate after returning from China and Iran, and a Sydney aged-care facility linked to seven confirmed cases remains in lockdown.
One of the new cases involves an 18-year-old woman, who NSW Health said came into contact with an infected person at home in western Sydney.
Health authorities are preparing to disinfect Epping Boys High School in Sydney’s northwest, which was shut down on Friday after a student tested positive.
The boy’s mother, a healthcare worker at Ryde Hospital where scores of staff are in quarantine, was awaiting a pathology result on Friday night.
Scott Morrison announced the creation of a $1bn coronavirus fighting fund to cover the costs associated with the treatment of victims of the disease.
Under the offer, the commonwealth will provide 50 per cent — or up to $500m — of the extra funds but will make an initial advance payment of $100m that will also cover costs incurred during the health crisis dating back to January 21.
“We are estimating, based on the advice we have at the moment, that this could be as much as about $1bn — $500m each — that we would at least have to be allowing for. I hope it’s not that much. It could be more,” the Prime Minister said.
There have been eight cases of human-to-human transmission of the virus among people in Australia with no travel history, alarming health authorities. Most of these cases are in Sydney’s north, with Epping Boys High School, Ryde Hospital and the Dorothy Henderson Lodge aged-care facility the epicentres of the outbreak.
Professor Dwyer — a foundation member of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS and director of medicine at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital for more than 20 years — said the Sydney cluster indicated the disease was becoming increasingly prevalent.
“The experience with other epidemics is that once this happens, there must be hundreds of people who are infected in Australia at this stage,” Professor Dwyer said. “And for every one infected person, the average is they will infect two and a half others.”
Virologist Ian Mackay said the cases of unknown origin indicated some of those who have the disease had “flown under the radar” and may be unaware they have the illness. “We are entering the next phase of the disease’s spread,” Professor Mackay said.
Doctors and nurses at Canterbury Hospital in Sydney’s inner west were ordered into quarantine after a theatre nurse was diagnosed with coronavirus. The nurse had recently returned from Iran, and epidemiological investigations indicate she worked at the hospital on February 25 while infectious.
NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said: “That has led us to the identification of 28 staff and three patients who were close contacts.”
The close contacts are now quarantined. A further 15 staff from Canterbury Hospital were identified as casual contacts.
Canterbury is the third Sydney hospital to be hit by the coronavirus. A doctor from Ryde Hospital also contracted the virus, forcing 61 staff and a number of patients into quarantine. A doctor from Liverpool Hospital who attended the same radiology seminar as the Ryde doctor was also infected. More than 20 staff from that hospital and five patients were identified as close contacts of the Liverpool doctor.
At Epping on Friday afternoon, parents gathered to greet their sons returning from camp to the closed boys high school which will be disinfected this weekend. Monica Seto, who was waiting for her son, said she was not concerned about the case at the school.
“Living in the area it seems there has been a lot of cases closer to home,” Ms Seto said. “It’s sort of been inevitable that it’s going to start to spread throughout the community. Obviously it’s very close to home, having a kid at the school, so I’m a little bit concerned but not overly worried. The school has been really on top of it.”
One mother placed a face mask on her son as soon as she met him and said she felt nervous after hearing about the case. In the back of her car, her other two children wore masks as they waited for their brother.
www.nbcnews.com
