May I also add my sincere appreciation of the efforts by our communities to contain the spread of the virus. Locally, people are really practising social isolation, good hand hygiene and they are staying at home. We are seeing these measures slow the rate of transmission of the virus.

I would just reiterate what the Prime Minister has been saying. Easter is a special holiday time and religious festival for most Australians, but please, this year, stay at home. Perhaps instead go camping in the garden or living room and Easter egg hunting around the house.

My second wish is for everyone to get their flu vaccination as soon as possible, either from your GP clinic or a pharmacy. We are headed into the flu season and this always means a rise in admissions to hospital. This year we don't want unnecessary admissions of flu cases to AWH, which will potentially take beds and staff that might urgently be required for COVID-19 patients. Vaccination is the best way to prevent succumbing to flu this winter.

Of course, if you are ill or injured, Albury Wodonga Health is there for you and the health service continues to deliver its emergency services, while at the same time planning our comprehensive response to the pandemic.

MORE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:

As if the news couldn't get much worse, news comes that the Great Barrier Reef has suffered yet another bleaching event, the third in five years.

Reef experts and scientists have been warning for years that unless we drastically cut our carbon emissions, the reef is on borrowed time. When will our governments get the message? At least one good thing from the COVID-19 crisis is that our leaders have started to take science seriously.

Scott Morrison and other leaders around the world have come out with their chief medical scientists standing beside them to make important announcements. Is it too much to hope that after this present COVID-19 crisis, science will gain a new recognition of its importance in averting the dire effects of global warming? The reef is shouting at us that the time for action is fast running out.

The sad deaths as a result of the virus contracted on the Ruby Princess and others brings into sharp focus the fundamentally flawed premise that 5000 people can be cheek by jowl on a ship and not catch something nasty.

If not the coronavirus, then maybe gastroenteritis or influenza. It is the equivalent of the population of a small town which covers 100 sq km concentrated in a tiny fraction of that area. Possibly 100 people board the ship with the flu, 100 are recovering from the flu and 100 are catching the flu.

A ship comes through Sydney Heads at 6am, docks, and leaves again that night. In that short interval the ship stores are replenished and the ship is cleaned. I use the term cleaned in its broadest sense. Have all the surfaces people have been in contact with been cleaned for the new passengers?