Coronavirus crisis: Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt reveals why Australia has ‘real cause for hope’ in COVID-19 fight

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt says Australia is seeing a “consolidated flattening of the curve”, prompting a sense of “hope and aspiration” for COVID-19 containment in coming months. It came as Mr Hunt announced $3 million in funding for research to help early diagnosis and treatment of coronavirus. The lead project will be undertaken by the University of Sydney, which will use CT scans to “offer a window into the body” to find out how exactly the virus impacts different patients. Further funding will go to the Doherty Institute to research more rapid diagnosis of patients in aged care and support for patients in intensive care, as well as to plan for future outbreaks of communicable diseases like coronavirus. Mr Hunt applauded Australians for following the new restrictions “magnificently” and confirmed the Government was now “actively planning that road out” of the pandemic. “We have come from the road in, which has been the rapid escalation of measures, (putting) us in as strong a position as any country,” he said. “We're currently on the road through… but over the weekend, over the last week, throughout the course of this week, we're actively planning that road out.” With growth in cases sitting at less than 2 per cent a day, Mr Hunt said Australia was flattening the curve “in a way that few others have seen”. “We are now beginning to see a consolidated flattening of the curve,” he said “This is a cause for real hope and real aspiration. We said at the start that we would get through this, we are getting through this.” Mr Hunt said the Government wanted to “work towards effective eradication” of the virus. While institutes across the world worked on finding a vaccine, Doherty Institute director professor Sharon Lewin said treatment options to limit the affect of COVID-19 on positive cases were well underway. “Most of the focus has been on anti-viral treatments to stop the virus in its tracks, or treatments targeted towards people in intensive care already very sick, and to stop death,” she said. “There are about 300 clinical trials currently of treatments for coronavirus. “I'm quite optimistic we will have results at least — whether the results will be good or not so good — from many clinical trials in the next few weeks.” The funding announced by the Morrison Government would also help with analysis of blood tests to try and find out how herd immunity is achieved. “Many of you would have heard about the concept of herd immunity, or people becoming immune to the virus without ever getting sick,” Professor Lewin said. “We still have no idea how common that occurs. To do that we need a blood test for coronavirus, which we now have… we will analyse thousands of Australians from different risk groups to understand how common immunity is.” Of the 6335 Australians diagnosed with the virus, 3338 have now recovered while 61 have died. A further 81 patients continue to battle COVID-19 in intensive care, with 35 of those on ventilators breathing for them. Mr Hunt confirmed there had been more than 34 million telehealth consultations since the program was expanded to be available to all Australians last month.