Early analysis of the Australian COVID-19 epidemic

Version of Record: August 26, 2020
Accepted Manuscript: August 13, 2020

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1. Part of Collection
COVID-19: A Collection of Articles

Edited by Diane M Harper et al.

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
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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

David J Price

Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

For correspondence
david.price1@unimelb.edu.au

Competing interests
David J Price, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Freya M Shearer

School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

For correspondence
freya.shearer@unimelb.edu.au

Competing interests
Freya M Shearer, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9600-3473
Michael T Meehan

Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Competing interests
Michael T Meehan, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Emma McBryde

Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Competing interests
Emma McBryde, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Robert Moss

School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Competing interests
Robert Moss, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Nick Golding

Spatial Ecology and Epidemiology Group, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
Nick Golding, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Eamon J Conway

Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory Epidemiology Unit at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Competing interests
Eamon J Conway, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Peter Dawson

Defence Science and Technology, Department of Defence, Melbourne, Australia

Competing interests
Peter Dawson, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Deborah Cromer

Infection Analytics Program, Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Competing interests
Deborah Cromer, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
James Wood

School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Competing interests
James Wood, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Sam Abbott

Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
Sam Abbott, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
Jodie McVernon

Population health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Competing interests
Jodie McVernon, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..
James M McCaw

School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Competing interests
James M McCaw, This work was undertaken with direct funding support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Office of Health Protection and has assisted the Australian Government in its epidemic response activities..

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2452-3098

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.

Copyright

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.