Then,there was much we didn't know about the virus later named SARS-CoV-2,which has since led to more than 95 million cases of COVID-19 around the world and 2 million lives lost.
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A year ago we had a lot to learn about this new contagion."We are operating in the dark to a certain degree,"global health security expert Associate Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott told this masthead at the time.
The virus was first detected in late December 2019. On January 10 both the NSW and Victorian health departments had issued alerts to medical workers to be on the lookout for flu-like symptoms in people who had arrived from Wuhan.
By January 19,the number of laboratory-confirmed cases had jumped to 65,and the US had just begun screening passengers arriving from Wuhan for the new virus.
That day Professor Murphy said there was"no clear evidence"of human-to-human transmission,although it was emerging as a possibility.
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"All confirmed cases have so far been people who have been in Wuhan,or visited Wuhan,"he said.
A NSW Health spokesman said workers had been issued advice on how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus,in a statement that showed the state's confidence in the contact-tracing system soon regarded as the best in the country.
"NSW Health has developed and exercised a range of procedures for case finding,diagnosis,and contact tracing for high-consequence infectious diseases ... should they occur in NSW,"the spokesman said on January 19,2020.
Case numbers in Chinacontinued to balloon. Border protection talks began,and the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee met to discuss the nation's public health response.
It wasn't until January 25 that cases on Australian soil were confirmed. Thefirst case was in a man who had arrived in Melbourne from Wuhan on January 19.
Following that news,Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was"always expected"Australia would develop cases of the virus. Later that day,thefirst three cases were confirmed in NSW – all in people who had travelled from China in the days and weeks prior.
Another week later,on February 1,Australia put a two-week travel ban on arrivals from mainland China. Fifty weeks later,the ban spans the entire globe and may last that long again.
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