Prime Minister Scott Morrison has suggested Australia could start to ease coronavirus restrictions in four weeks, after setting up "industrial capacity" contact tracing and boosting testing.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The current rules would remain in place for four weeks, when they would be reviewed.
In that time, authorities would set up more extensive testing, not only of people with coronavirus symptoms.
Contact tracing must also be improved.
The states and territories had "a team of Sherlock Holmes is out there at the moment and they are doing a fantastic job".
"We need to lift that to an industrial capability and do that using technology and we need to do that as soon as we possibly can," he said.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Mr Morrison also said Parliament would sit again in May, rather than August as planned, with a trial sitting initially to test whether normal parliament could resume.
Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said the numbers were encouraging.
"If we relax the distancing measures that are stopping or reducing that community transmission, that will inevitably lead to some more outbreaks of community transmission," he said.
"Unless we are prepared as a nation to detect those outbreaks really early and get on top of them and controlled them and isolate the cases and quarantined the contacts, we could end up with large community outbreaks that could lead to situations like we've all seen every night on the nightly news in high-income countries with good health systems like the USA and the UK.
"We can't afford to do relaxation until we have a public health system which is so finely tuned that it can detect and respond to any outbreak."
To be screened call Albury Wodonga Health or Murrumbidgee Local Health District (02) 6058 4444 or 1800 831 099.
Our COVID-19 news articles relating to public health and safety are free for anyone to access. However, we depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.