Early analysis of the Australian COVID-19 epidemic
- The University of Melbourne, Australia
- James Cook University, Australia
- Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, United Kingdom
- Department of Defence, Australia
- University of New South Wales, Australia
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Abstract
As of 1 May 2020, there had been 6,808 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. Of these, 98 had died from the disease. The epidemic had been in decline since mid-March, with 308 cases confirmed nationally since 14 April. This suggests that the collective actions of the Australian public and government authorities in response to COVID-19 were sufficiently early and assiduous to avert a public health crisis — for now. Analysing factors that contribute to individual country experiences of COVID-19, such as the intensity and timing of public health interventions, will assist in the next stage of response planning globally. We describe how the epidemic and public health response unfolded in Australia up to 13 April. We estimate that the effective reproduction number was likely below 1 in each Australian state since mid-March and forecast that clinical demand would remain below capacity thresholds over the forecast period (from mid-to-late April).
Data availability
Analysis code is included in the supplementary materials. Datasets analysed and generated during this study are included in the supplementary materials. For estimates of the time-varying effective reproduction number (Figure 2), the complete line listed data within the Australian national COVID-19 database are not publicly available. However, we provide the cases per day by notification date and state (as shown in Figures 1 and S1) which, when supplemented with the estimated distribution of the delay from symptom onset to notification (samples from this distribution are provided as a data file), analyses of the time-varying effective reproduction number can be performed.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Department of Health, Australian Government (NA)
- James M McCaw
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Ben S Cooper, Mahidol University, Thailand
Version history
- Received: May 11, 2020
- Accepted: August 12, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: August 13, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 26, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Price et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Early analysis of the Australian COVID-19 epidemic
eLife 9:e58785.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58785
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
Circulating omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been associated with various chronic diseases and mortality, but results are conflicting. Few studies examined the role of omega-6/omega-3 ratio in mortality.
Methods:
We investigated plasma omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs and their ratio in relation to all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a large prospective cohort, the UK Biobank. Of 85,425 participants who had complete information on circulating PUFAs, 6461 died during follow-up, including 2794 from cancer and 1668 from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Associations were estimated by multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression with adjustment for relevant risk factors.
Results:
Risk for all three mortality outcomes increased as the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs increased (all Ptrend <0.05). Comparing the highest to the lowest quintiles, individuals had 26% (95% CI, 15–38%) higher total mortality, 14% (95% CI, 0–31%) higher cancer mortality, and 31% (95% CI, 10–55%) higher CVD mortality. Moreover, omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs in plasma were all inversely associated with all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality, with omega-3 showing stronger effects.
Conclusions:
Using a population-based cohort in UK Biobank, our study revealed a strong association between the ratio of circulating omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs and the risk of all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality.
Funding:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Health under the award number R35GM143060 (KY). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
