Border residents will be able to ask their COVID-19 questions at a free La Trobe University forum featuring experts including Sally Squire.
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The Albury Wodonga Health pandemic response director will join the Australian National University School of History's Frank Bongiorno and Joseph Tucci, Associate Professor in Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at La Trobe Bendigo.
Their panel discussion will be broadcast online from 6pm on Tuesday night.
La Trobe University Albury-Wodonga Biomedical Science senior lecturer Cathryn Hogarth will moderate the panel.
"This is an opportunity for our community to ask questions, especially given the diversity of the panel," she said.
"What's really great about this panel is we're bringing in the science aspect, the regional health aspect and the historical aspect."
Dr Tucci will discuss advances in finding a COVID-19 treatment and vaccine, while Professor Bongiorno will compare the pandemic to the Spanish flu.
"We seem to have made some of the same mistakes, especially in regard to border closures and how that's been managed," Dr Hogarth said.
"We were doomed to repeat history in some ways, but what Frank's perspective will bring, is if we can acknowledge that there's things we did repeat, what can we learn from that as we move out of the pandemic?
"Having Sally Squire on the panel, she can bring the idea of how our community prepared the response to the pandemic, and how that was then communicated."
Dr Hogarth said the panel would touch on research happening, with the Oxford vaccine and a vaccine being developed by the University of Queensland both looking promising.
"I can't see one being rolled out before early 2021, but hopefully by this time next year, there will be the opportunity for vaccine treatment," she said.
"In terms of treatment strategies, there was an interesting study I saw that was about blood types ... that might be why some people are positive, but asymptomatic.
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"There's a lot of really bright scientists everywhere, especially in Australia, that are working on this - everyone wants to see some form of treatment."
The event's primary purpose is to enrich the learning experience for students across a variety of health and science disciplines.
It's also aimed at industry and community members, particularly those in Albury-Wodonga, as the discussion will cover the local health response to COVID-19 and consider the impacts of the border closure.
Some of the key areas of discussion will be:
- The way science has moved to understand the virus so far, and what the priorities are for future research - what do we need to find out about this virus?
- How Albury-Wodonga Health worked to respond to the crisis, how that approach has changed over time, and what changes do they foresee may become a permanent way of working.
- What comparisons can be drawn between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu, and whether any predictions can be made about a post-COVID world by looking back on pandemics of the past.
