A thousand days of COVID-19: How the pandemic unfolded in Australia

On January 20, 2020, the smoke was still clearing from the intense bushfires that had ravaged the country. The east coast had been battered by intense hailstorms and flash flooding. And an obscure and as-yet unnamed disease came to Australia.

That date feels like yesterday and a million years ago at once, but today marks 1000 days since authorities confirmed Australia’s first COVID-19 case.

On that day, the 2019 novel coronavirus, as it was then called, was listed as a human disease under the Biosecurity Act of 2015.

Discussion was underway as to whether the government would take the drastic step of stopping the three direct flights coming in from Wuhan to Sydney every week.

And five days later four men tested positive to the virus in Sydney, the first cases in Australia.

With so little known of the virus, the initial advice to Australians was to avoid contact with people with flu-like symptoms, cook meat and eggs thoroughly, avoid contact with live wild or farm animals and not travel to Wuhan.

At that point, the idea of a national lockdown was unthinkable. But 100 days later, things had changed dramatically.

On day 100 of Australia’s pandemic, the nation had been in lockdown for more than a month.

That day only 19 new cases were diagnosed in the entire country. In Western Australia, there was only one case. In South Australia, there was none at all.

But on that day, more Americans had died of COVID-19 than had died in the Vietnam War.

At the time, a shortfall of testing capacity was a serious concern worldwide.

All non-essential businesses in Melbourne were closed as full lockdown kicked in in the city.

Meanwhile, thousands of people streamed across the border from NSW to Queensland after a border closure was announced.

The closure was announced following the diagnosis of 12 COVID-19 cases in NSW.

People returning to the ACT from Victoria were told they could not drive through NSW to get home.

And Australia’s chief medical officer warned there was no guarantee a COVID-19 vaccine would ever be developed.

NSW and Queensland also recorded no new COVID-19 cases.

But in the following days, a cluster in South Australia would snap borders shut again.

As Australia was exiting coronavirus conditions, the virus was spreading rampantly in the United States.

But change was in the air. Donald Trump had lost the election two weeks earlier, partly on the back of America’s botched handling of the pandemic.

And days earlier, Pfizer had announced its COVID-19 vaccine was 90 per cent effective.

“It is the beginning of the end of this pandemic,” Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese rolled up his sleeve the day after Prime Minister Scott Morrison did so.

“They’re safe. They’re effective. Do it for Australia,” Albanese said.

With limited stocks, the vaccine was only available to the elderly and vulnerable and those in high-risk jobs.

That day, the COVID-19 death toll hit 500,000 in the United States. New president Joe Biden marked the milestone with a moment of silence.

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A hundred days later, the optimism from months earlier had been replaced with dread.

In South Australia, Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier was widely mocked for saying spectators at AFL games should not touch the ball if it was kicked into the crowd.

“This is an object touched by I don’t know how many sweaty men on a football field – if you do catch the ball, just sanitise your hands immediately after,” she said.

Australians had gone from obsessing over new case numbers to a new figure – the vaccination rate.

Earlier that week, the NSW government had announced the hard lockdown would end when 70 per cent of the population was double vaccinated.

Day 600 marked regional Victorians’ first days out of lockdown.

Meanwhile, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced she would no longer be holding daily press conferences on the pandemic.

On Day 700 of the pandemic, most Australians had been vaccinated, but a new variant had taken hold.

On December 20, 2021, Omicron was beginning to spread rapidly around the country.

The Omicron surge overwhelmed PCR testing capacity around the country.

In the following week, the massive backlog of testing samples meant most people who had caught COVID-19 had recovered by the time they got their result back.

Health authorities were considering whether to allow the diagnosis of COVID-19 through rapid antigen tests.

But a rush on pharmacies meant rapid antigen tests were not on shelves.

By March 30, 2022, tens of thousands of Australians were catching COVID-19 every day.

But by then, the public mood had shifted away from concern over the disease.

Instead, the eyes of the nation were on northern NSW, which was being overwhelmed with flooding.

In South Australia, the government announced that unvaccinated teachers would be allowed to return to classrooms.

On July 8, 2022, a surge in COVID-19 cases combined with a winter flu put hospitals under incredible strain.

In Victoria, a one-year-old suspected to have COVID-19 died in an emergency department during the ramping crisis.

“COVID is not over,” NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said that day.

But the crisis of COVID-19 was not keeping people indoors. Airports around the country were overwhelmed by a surge of travellers and a shortage of staff.

Health authorities ask people who are symptomatic to stay at home, but they are no longer legally required to.

Nearly all pandemic-related restrictions have ended.

And states are no longer releasing their COVID-19 numbers on a daily basis.

“At the moment, we have very low rates of both cases, hospitalisations, intensive care admissions, aged-care outbreaks and various other measures,” Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said last month.

In the past 1000 days, 15,487 Australians have died from the disease, and more than 10 million cases have been reported.