150,000 Australians Could Die From Coronavirus, Experts Warned

• Some experts fear that Australia may experience the same coronavirus casualty in Italy, as the country suffered the most number of cases and deaths outside China.
• Predicting the worst-case-scenario, Australian authorities worry that up to 60% of its citizens may acquire the deadly COVID-19.
• Health authorities reminded the public to prepare and prevent the predictions.

Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly warned the public of an alarming worst-case-scenario prediction of 150,000 patients who may die of coronavirus in the country if they make the same mistakes as Italy – where numbers of cases and deaths have significantly spiked.

In a forum in Australia, Kelly said they are looking at a figure that ranges between 20 to 60 percent of Australians acquiring the fatal COVID-19. He also added that in this kind of infectious disease, the death rate is about 1 percent of the people who tested positive of the virus.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reported a estimated figure that if 20 percent of the 24 million Australian population gets infected, that means about 4.8 million of them would acquire the disease. With Kelly’s death rate projections in mind, 1 percent would be equivalent to around 150,000 Australians dying due toCOVID-19.

If the rate increased to 40 percent of the population infected by the virus, that would mean 9.6 million of Australians being ill and 100,000 of them dying from the disease. If the figure spiked to 60 percent, as worst-case-scenario, Australia will be treating 15 million patients of coronavirus and 150,000 of them will die.

“People over the age of 60 are more susceptible to this disease. We are finding, particularly in the much older age groups, 80 and above, the death rate is actually quite high,” Kelly said in a press conference.

The World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network chair Dale Fisher warned recently that Australia is following the same coronavirus trajectory as Italy, the second worst affected country worldwide.

Fisher criticized Australia’s way of containing the virus by sending coronavirus patients home for self-isolation. He added that such mitigation process was a “critical error” made by both Italian and Australian authorities.

“If you are sending people home, then you need to be absolutely sure while there is virus in their throat that they are staying at home, having no contact with their family, that there are no visitors coming around, that they are not sneaking off for a quick bite to eat, the gym or whatever,” Fisher added.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has since imposed several measures to contain the spread of coronavirus such as requiring all people who have traveled abroad to self-quarantine themselves for 14-days. He also banned all non-essential events where there are more than 500 people in attendance.

Meanwhile, Fisher said Australia should follow the best practices of Asian countries, particularly Singapore, as it admitted all patients who were tested of the virus in their hospitals until they recovered.

However, Queensland’s Heath Minister Steven Miles firmly said that “self isolation remains the best way forward” to contain the spread of the virus. He added that as the patients increase, it is likely that they will be advised to do self quarantine than occupy a hospital bed.

Kelly agreed with Miles, explaining that infected individuals do not need any medical assistance as about 80 percent of them only experience mild symptoms.

As of posting, there are 368 confirmed coronavirus cases of coronavirus and 5 deaths in Australia.

Watch the full press conference with Paul Kelly here: