COVID-19 pandemic in Australia
The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia was part of the worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The first confirmed case in Australia was identified on 25 January 2020, in Victoria, when a man who had returned from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, tested positive for the virus. By 6 August 2022, Australia had reported over 11,350,000 cases and 19,265 deaths, with Victoria's 2020 second wave having the highest fatality rate per case.
In March 2020, the Australian government established the intergovernmental National Cabinet and declared a human biosecurity emergency in response to the outbreak. Australian borders were closed to all non-residents on 20 March, and returning residents were required to spend two weeks in supervised quarantine hotels from 27 March. Many individual states and territories also closed their borders to varying degrees, with some remaining closed until late 2020, and continuing to periodically close during localised outbreaks. Social distancing rules were introduced on 21 March, and state governments started to close "non-essential" services. "Non-essential services" included social gathering venues such as pubs and clubs but unlike many other countries did not include most business operations such as construction, manufacturing and many retail categories. The number of new cases initially grew sharply, then levelled out at about 350 per day around 22 March, and started falling at the beginning of April to under 20 cases per day by the end of the month.
Australia was one of few countries to pursue a zero-COVID "suppression" strategy until late 2021, meaning it aimed to minimise domestic community transmission. Implementation involved strict controls on international arrivals and aggressively responding to local outbreaks with lockdowns and exhaustive contact tracing of domestic COVID-19 clusters. A second wave of infections emerged in Victoria during May and June 2020, which was attributed to an outbreak at a Melbourne quarantine hotel. The second wave, though largely localised to Melbourne, was much more widespread and deadlier than the first; at its peak, the state had over 7,000 active cases. Victoria underwent a second strict lockdown which eventually lasted almost four months. The wave ended with zero new cases being recorded on 26 October 2020. No deaths from COVID-19 were recorded in Australia from 28 December 2020 until 13 April 2021, when one death occurred in Queensland.
The nationwide vaccination program began with the first doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine being administered in Sydney on 21 February 2021. The country's vaccine rollout, which fell short of its initial targets and was described as slow, was criticised. Further cluster outbreaks occurred in late 2020 and mid-2021, with several brief "snap lockdowns" announced in certain states to contain their spread, particularly as novel variants of SARS-CoV-2 arrived in Australia.
In July 2021, the Australian government after continually stating COVID-zero was not sustainable, published the 'National Plan' to live with COVID. As outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant which started in June 2021 in New South Wales spread, almost half of Australia's population and most major cities were in lockdown for at least 3 days during July 2021. The outbreak worsened in New South Wales and spread to Victoria in the following weeks causing new record daily cases in both stated later in 2021. Lockdowns were phased out after 70% of the population was vaccinated in October with most public health restrictions removed after vaccinating 90% of its population in December 2021, as the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant drove further records of infections. International travel began to resume in November 2021 and returned to normal in early 2022.
The government declared the emergency response "finished" in September 2022 and removed all restrictions including the requirement to isolate if one was infected from 14 October 2022. On 20 October 2023, the Australian Chief Medical Officer declared that COVID-19 was no longer a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance and ended all national emergency response and coordination, shifting COVID-19 management to a more general infectious disease framework.
Background
A novel coronavirus that caused a respiratory illness was identified in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, and was reported to the World Health Organization on 31 December 2019, which confirmed its concern on 12 January 2020. WHO declared the outbreak a Public health emergency of international concern on 30 January, and a pandemic on 11 March.The case fatality rate of COVID-19 is much lower than that of SARS, a related disease which emerged in 2002, but its transmission has been significantly greater, leading to a much greater total death toll.
The widespread reporting of the bushfire season in major media and social media around the world caused a significant drop in the number of tourists coming to Australia, including those from China. The absence of tourist arrivals during this time could have played a significant role in sparing Australia from the spread of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic. This is in contrast to other major cities in Europe and North America, where the early spread of the virus continued undetected until late February 2020 or early March 2020.
Timeline
On 23 January 2020, biosecurity officials began screening arrivals on flights from Wuhan to Sydney. Two days later the first case of a SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported, that of a Chinese citizen who arrived from Guangzhou on 19 January. The patient was tested and received treatment in Melbourne. On the same day, three other patients tested positive in Sydney after returning from Wuhan.First wave: March–April 2020
Australia reported its 100th case on 10 March 2020 roughly corresponding to the start of Australia's first wave. Case numbers and deaths continued to climb during March and April, but by late April the first wave had effectively ended. On 6 June, both New South Wales and Victoria reported no new cases for the previous 24 hours, with only Queensland and Western Australia reporting one new case each, the lowest national total since February.Second wave: June–October 2020
On 20 June, the Victorian Government announced the re-tightening of restrictions on household gatherings following a spike in community transmitted cases over the previous week, reported to be mainly caused by family-to-family transmission in large household gatherings. Most easing of restrictions that were to take place were postponed. The same day restrictions were re-tightened in Victoria, the Western Australian Government announced the state would move into "Phase 4" from 27 June, permitting some of the most relaxed restrictions in the country.On 26 October, the "second wave" ended when Victoria recorded zero new cases and zero deaths statewide for the first time since 9 June. On the same day, Daniel Andrews announced a significant easing of restrictions to take effect over the coming weeks. From 11.59 pm on 27 October, people no longer required a reason to leave home, all retail, restaurants, hotels, cafes and bars were allowed to open with capacity limits, beauty, personal services and tattooing were allowed to reopen, outdoor community sport for under 18 and outdoor non-contact sport for adults recommenced, a maximum of 10 people were allowed to attend weddings, a maximum of 20 mourners were allowed to attend funerals, and faith and religious gatherings were allowed to resume, subject to patron limitations. With a length of 112 days, this Victorian COVID-19 lockdown was the longest continuous lockdown world-wide, as of October 2020.
Third wave: June 2021 – October 2021
recorded no deaths between late October 2020 and August 2021. New South Wales recorded their first death of the 2021 wave on 10 July 2021.On 18 June in NSW, a SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant COVID-19 cluster in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs had grown to 4 cases. On 25 June in NSW, after 22 new cases of the Delta variant brought infections linked to the Bondi cluster to 65 total, an initial lockdown was announced for four Sydney local government areas.
New South Wales recorded its "worst day" of its continuing June 2021 outbreak of the COVID-19 Delta variant on 29 August 2021, with six deaths, and a record 1,218 new local confirmed cases. Whilst the daily number of cases continues to increase, at the time this was the highest daily confirmed case total Australia had received on a single day, surpassing Victoria's record in the previous wave. However, the recorded COVID-19 deaths is significantly lower than the 41 daily deaths recorded in Victoria during its peak.
On 30 August in NSW, the Ministry of Health reported four deaths in the previous 24 hours of people confirmed to have had COVID-19. One of them, a man in his 50s who died at Dubbo Hospital, is believed to be the first Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander COVID-19 related death. He was not vaccinated. The total number of COVID related deaths in NSW reached 149 since the beginning of the pandemic, and 93 during the NSW Delta outbreak. The official national death toll broke 1,000 at 1,002.
On 31 August in Victoria, the deaths of two women were reported, the first COVID deaths in that state since 30 November 2020, which ended a nine-month streak with no fatalities.
On 3 October 2021, Melbourne surpassed Buenos Aires as the city with the most cumulative days spent in lockdown in the entire world, having spent 245 days in lockdown since the start of the pandemic. The sixth lockdown ended in Melbourne at midnight on 21 October 2021 after a record 262 cumulative days throughout the pandemic. The lockdown in Sydney ended on 11 October 2021 after 106 days, following the initial Delta variant outbreak.
Australia began to re-open to the world from 1 November 2021, with vaccinated Australian citizens and permanent residents allowed to enter NSW and Victoria without being restricted by strict flight cap numbers or long hotel quarantine stays from that date.
On 8 November, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that as of 17 December, all eligible unvaccinated citizens over the age of 16 would be banned from pubs, clubs, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, music festivals and stadiums, government-owned galleries, museums and libraries, and they would not be allowed to visit hospitals, aged care facilities, prisons or disability services, among other restrictions. The premier described this as "a reward for the fully vaccinated and a precaution for when the borders open", and stated that restrictions were expected to continue into 2022.