Coronavirus facts: Key questions answered by experts

The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases across Australia and around the world are continuing to rise, with politicians, medical experts, celebrities and even members of the public continuing to spread vast amounts of information regarding the virus and the scale of the pandemic.

But with so much information out there, it can be hard to know which distribution channels to trust and where to look for the most up-to-date information.

Now a selection of leading experts from around Australia have come together to answer a series of burning questions about Covid-19, including why schools have not yet closed and whether Australia should expect to see similar rates of infection as countries like Italy and China.

Is Australia heading for the same situation as Italy?

“We hope not. This is exactly why we have instated social distancing so early, before we have started to see a large amount of community transmission,” Associate Professor Hussan Vally, an epidemiologist from La Trobe University, said.

“The best indicator of what can happen if we don’t act decisively is what has transpired in China, Italy and South Korea. We have looked at what has happened in these countries and trying to learn the lessons to avoid this.”

Why hasn’t Australia moved to general school closures?

Vally responded: “As with any action, there are unintended consequences. If all children were to be kept away from school there would be consequences for children in missing out on classes and for parents in having to organise care of their children and who may have to take time off work. This includes parents who are healthcare workers and would not be able to go to work at this important time.

“Thus, the call seems to have been made at this stage of the epidemic in Australia that the amount of community transmission we have does not justify this action, but you can be assured that this decision will be revisited as we see how the epidemic progresses in Australia.”

Does surviving Covid-19 give you immune protection?

Professor Ian Henderson from the University of Queensland said: “The answer is that we do not know yet. It seems likely that infection will generate protective immunity, at least in the short-term, and in the absence of virus mutation. There have been rare reported cases of reinfection, where an infected individual seems to have recovered but then tests positive for the virus later, for reasons that are unclear.

“However, the general consensus amongst experts is that recovery from infection is likely to result in subsequent protection; the reinfection observation is unlikely to have occurred and probably results from a testing regime that gave a false negative result at the time of recovery.”

However Professor Bruce Thompson, Dean of Health at Swinburne University, added that while it is not yet known what level of protection it provides, surviving Covid-19 will give people immune protection. He said: “We are still not entirely clear whether it is full protection however it is much better than no protection.”

What is the current situation like for the healthcare system and will it hold up?

Professor Thompson said that, while all is currently OK, if the virus spreads at the rate it has in countries such as Italy and China, the Australian health care system will be placed under huge pressure.

“This is the very thing that we are trying to avoid by placing the country into isolation,” he said. “It is also bigger than COVID-19 as taking up hospital beds with COVID-19 is displacing people with the usual things people go to hospital for. Plus we are about to enter influenza season.”

How would a coronavirus vaccine work?

Henderson answered: “With the emergence of 2019-nCoV, there are now 15 potential vaccine candidates in the pipeline globally using a wide range of technology mRNA, DNA, nanoparticle, synthetic and modified virus-like particles. It will take at least six months for most of these potential vaccines to start phase 1 clinical trials; the vaccines funded by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), such as the vaccine being developed by The University of Queensland, are likely to reach trials the quickest. The next challenge will be finding enough production capacity globally to produce these competing vaccines, at a scale that millions or even billions of people can be vaccinated.”

Is it actually better to have young people (who are at less risk of dying/serious illness) to get COVID-19 to develop herd immunity?

Dr Trish Campbell, from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, explained that herd immunity occurs when the number of people immune to infection in a population is large enough to prevent infection of the non-immune people.

“Let’s say we have a disease for which an individual introduced into an entirely susceptible population infects two new people during their entire infectious period,” Campbell said. “Assuming recovery from infection leads to immunity, then the number of immune people in the population steadily grows. As the epidemic progresses, more of an individual’s contacts will be immune, making it harder to pass the infection on to new people. When an infected individual is only able to, on average, infect less than one individual the epidemic will die out. This occurs because as an infectious individual recovers, since they infected less than one other person, there will be fewer infectious individuals remaining. So herd immunity (often generated by vaccination, rather than infection) can lead to a disease dying out.”

However she added that there is still not enough information regarding the role that young people are playing in the transmission of the virus. Campbell also pointed out that it is still not known whether Covid-19 produces immunity and how long that immunity might last.

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFO This article is of a general nature and FYI only, because it doesn’t take into account your personal health requirements or existing medical conditions. That means it’s not personalised health advice and shouldn’t be relied upon as if it is. Before making a health-related decision, you should work out if the info is appropriate for your situation and get professional medical advice.