The Australian government's modelling of the coronavirus has "suppressed sufficiently strongly" the COVID-19 curve in the country but it is not the time to be complacent as doing so will undo all the hard work, according to heath experts.
Australia has so far reported 6,507 confirmed coronavirus cases and 63 deaths. The number of new cases of COVID-19 per day peaked at 460 on March 28 and has since fallen steeply. Just 38 new cases were diagnosed across the country on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia is currently being "suppressed sufficiently strongly", however, "this effort could take many months, and would be dependent on the initial number of cases in each jurisdiction", the experts leading the coronavirus modelling said.
The elimination of the virus is achievable if current social distancing measures are sustained indefinitely and there is an absence of imported cases or localised clusters, they said.
"Our epidemic is in decline," said Jodie McVernon, director of Doherty Epidemiology, who is leading the team that built the scientific model.
"But it does not let us to be complacent. If we were to release those measures now...those 10 cases today would produce 25 new cases over the course of their infection, not five," McVernon told 'The Age' website.
He said if social distancing measures are relaxed, the cases will rise "because we're all susceptible to this".
"The virus will come back from somewhere. We cannot return to life as normal. We need to get that in our consciousness." McVernon said.
James McCaw, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and a member of the modelling team, said the novel coronavirus has "a habit of surprising us".
Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy also confirmed that the modelling based on real Australian data was showing "flattening of the (COVID-19) curve" and the progressive drop in numbers of new positive cases.
"A very gratifying outcome but, again, one about which we cannot be complacent," he said.
Murphy said it was quite possible that Australia could eradicate the virus in some parts of the country.
"We've had some states where there was no case for some days and small number of imported cases. We are on the same trajectory as New Zealand, which is aiming for eradication and if we achieve complete lack of transmission and no cases that would be great," he said.
Murphy, however, said it was not known if there were asymptomatic cases circulating and that the surveillance and control mechanisms could not be relaxed even if there is no new case detected for a period of time.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia has one of the most rigorous coronavirus testing systems in the world, with more than 374,500 tests completed.
The new modelling has confirmed that measures put in place to suppress the virus have largely been successful in slowing and reversing the growth of cases in the country, he said.
"It is estimated that overall, Australia is currently detecting approximately 92 per cent of all symptomatic cases, with each state and territory individually detecting at least 80 per cent. Australia's point estimate when compared with other countries is 84 per cent, the highest reported detection rate globally," the prime minister noted.
He said the modelling showed that the current effective reproduction number or Reff needs to be less than one and the current trend looks very encouraging.
Reff is an estimate of how many people a single case of the infection can spread to.
Australia on Thursday extended the nationwide lockdown to another four weeks.
Morrison stressed that while other lockdown measures could be relaxed after four weeks, the 1.5-metre guideline will continue to stay until a vaccine was developed.
As part of its social distancing measures designed to limit spread of the coronavirus, the Australian government has asked people to maintain a distance of 1.5 metres away from each other.
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