The current state of COVID-19 in Australia: importation and spread

Jessica Liebig; Raja Jurdak; Ahmad El Shoghri; Dean Paini

Australia's cumulative epidemic curve follows that of Germany most closely. Given this observation and the fact that the reported number of COVID-19 cases in Australia has risen well above 20, the risk of a continuing exponential increase in the number of cases is substantial. Figure 3 shows the cumulative number of reported cases in Australia through to 25 th March 2020 (left panel). After 29 th February the number of reported cases increases linearly on the semi-logarithmic plot, indicating an exponential increase in cases. The right panel of Figure 3 shows the cumulative number of cases reported in each of the Australian 3 . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. states and territories. The curves of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland indicate exponential growth. Based on the observations made in other countries around the world that have reported a high number of COVID-19 cases, it is expected that numbers in Australia will continue to rise exponentially. We estimate the number of cases expected to be reported during the next seven days, until 1 st April, by fitting the observed data to an exponential function. Figure 4 shows the cumulative number and predicted cumulative number of cases together with the 95% confidence interval (shaded area). If the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise exponentially, in a similar manner as observed in previous weeks, we predict that by 1 st April the number of reported COVID-19 cases in Australia could be as high as 11,908.