Doctors need extra legal protections against “not-so-obvious” medical negligence claims emerging from the COVID-19 threat, a medicolegal expert is warning.

US state governments, including those in New York and Michigan, are offering their doctors legal immunity because of the clinical risks they are taking in systems overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. 

But while the pressures on Australian doctors are not the same, medicolegal researcher Professor Anne-Maree Kelly claims there still remain specific medicolegal threats for doctors here, particularly after COVID-19 cases dropped in mid-April.

“What might’ve been reasonable to do in March would not be considered reasonable by May,” said Professor Kelly, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Melbourne.