On February 7, 2020 the Australian Department of Health released its first Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) [v1, v2] providing an overview of the National operational action plan, a living document guided the Australian governments “health response” to the pandemic. [1]

The document noted:

  • “currently, there is no specific treatment (no vaccine and no antiviral) against the new virus.”  [This “health” body does not mention of boosting the immune system as a first line of defense!]
  • that no previous “emerging” viruses had “sustained human to human transmission”.
  • Up until then the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza (the AHMPPI) was the key nationally agreed document to guide Australia’s pandemic response, this plan adapts AHMPPI for novel coronavirus.
  • the pandemic response activities “should be implemented”  would “be selected by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC), in consultation with relevant parties and on advice from expert bodies.”

The AHPPC is part of the Department of Health’s and is “key health sector coordination mechanism that provides advice to whole-of-government crisis committees”, they are part of the emergency response National Incident Centre (NIC) the focal body that inturn coordinates with the WHO.

AHPPC gave their first advice on January 29, 2020, a time which “AHPPC still believes that most infections are transmitted by people with symptomatic disease” but they took a “highly precautionary approach” by recommending people should isolate in their home for 14 days following exposure. [2]

Originally coined the National Incident Room, the health department established the National Incident Center (NIC) in November 2019 in response to a measles outbreak in Samoa, followed by the Black Summer bushfires across Australia in late 2019.  NIC are also responsible for undertaking the duties and responsibilities of Australia under the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), and thus the focal point for WHO communications as directed by the National Health Security Act (2007). The centre is staffed by a core of officers within the Department of Health, and draws on other government agencies. [3, 4, 5]