‘I had to look up where Wuhan was’ says CMO Professor Paul Kelly
Australia will soon mark 1000 days since it recorded its first COVID-19 case - and experts reflect on the life-altering crisis of the pandemic era
When COVID-19 hit Australia, the country’s top health bureaucrats were bracing for something big — but even they were yet to grasp the enormity of the looming crisis.
It was 25 January 2020 — the day before Australia Day — when authorities confirmed the country’s first case, a man from Wuhan in China’s Hubei province who flew into Melbourne.
Weeks before, then acting-chief medical officer (CMO) Professor Paul Kelly was sitting in a room at Canberra’s National Incident Centre encased in thick smoke from the Black Summer bushfires that burned near the capital.
It was there he heard about an unusual cluster of what sounded like pneumonia in Wuhan.
