But it depends how it develops. It might develop in focal parts of the country where we might be able to control it, if it develops in a number of parts it could last for quite a number of weeks. At the moment we are just focusing on containing and flattening it, and we will be reviewing our public health measures every day.
One of the most important areas of preparation is to make sure we have sufficient critical care capacity. If we get a number of people who have severe disease and there is a lot of planning in that space. I do reiterate that if you did have a large outbreak in this country, probably 80% of people would be treated at home because they are so mild. But those who might need hospital, we have plans to stop elective surgery, expand open beds, find extra workforce, all of those plans are well advanced.
I think we have a very well-prepared health system, there is clearly more preparation that is ongoing and we have clearly got to make sure in this worldwide situation that we can maximise the resources available in Australia such as those testing equipment.
If we get a large outbreak and we can flatten the curve, it could go well into the middle of the year before it peaks. But there are some countries … which seems to have peaked quite early and controlled the outbreak. One of the things we know about outbreaks and epidemics as they are very hard to predict.
