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Australia's coronavirus death toll hits 20 as cases near 5000

Author
Newstalk ZB / news.com.au,
Publish Date
Wed, 1 Apr 2020, 12:15PM
Returning overseas travellers are ushered into the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney for their 14-day quarantine on Sunday. Photo / Jeremy Piper AAP
Returning overseas travellers are ushered into the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney for their 14-day quarantine on Sunday. Photo / Jeremy Piper AAP

Australia's coronavirus death toll hits 20 as cases near 5000

Author
Newstalk ZB / news.com.au,
Publish Date
Wed, 1 Apr 2020, 12:15PM

The coronavirus death toll in Australia has risen to 20.

The 95-year-old woman from Sydney’s Dorothy Henderson Lodge died yesterday, NSW Health announced this morning, the state’s ninth death. The latest victim is the fifth resident of the hard-hit Macquarie Park nursing home to die.

It comes as the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reaches 4711 after NSW reported another 150.

That number could pass 5000 today as other states and territories provide updates.

As of Wednesday morning there were 2182 in NSW, 917 in Victoria, 743 in Queensland, 337 in South Australia, 364 in Western Australia, 69 in Tasmania, 80 in the Australian Capital Territory and 19 in the Northern Territory.

Twenty people have now died – two in WA, two in Queensland, nine in NSW, four in Victoria, two in Tasmania and one in the ACT.

There are now 50 people in intensive care, with 20 of those on ventilators, Health Minister Greg Hunt said Tuesday.

Australia’s first coronavirus fatality was on Sunday, March 1.

He was a 78-year-old Perth man who was among 163 Australians evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan and quarantined at Howard Springs in the Northern Territory.

The second death came on Tuesday, March 3. The 95-year-old woman was a resident at the Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Macquarie Park, in Sydney’s north.

Two other residents of the same nursing home later died — an 82-year-old man on Sunday, March 8, followed by a 90-year-old woman on Saturday, March 14.

On Friday, March 13, a 77-year-old woman died in a Sydney hospital after recently arriving from Queensland. She had developed symptoms on the plane, was taken to hospital and died the same day.

An 86-year-old man died in a Sydney hospital on Tuesday, March 17, making him the state’s fifth death and the country’s sixth.

On Thursday, March 19, an 81-year-old woman died in hospital, bringing the death toll to seven. NSW Health said she had close contact with another confirmed case at Ryde Hospital.

The eighth death was a woman in her 70s who was rushed to hospital after disembarking the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney on March 14. She died in hospital on Tuesday morning, March 24.

The ninth death was another Ruby Princess passenger. The 68-year-old Queensland man died in the afternoon on Wednesday, March 25, in intensive care at Toowoomba Hospital after returning from Sydney.

Two men in their 70s died in hospital in Victoria that same night, marking the state’s first deaths and the country’s 10th and 11th. On Thursday, March 26, another Victorian man in his 70s died in hospital.

Later that day, another man in his 70s died in Joondalup Hospital in Perth after fainting in his home. He had also recently been on a cruise ship that had docked in Sydney, the Celebrity Solstice.

On Saturday, March 28, another Dorothy Henderson Lodge resident died in hospital, bringing the national death toll to 14.

The 15th and 16th deaths were announced moments apart on Sunday, March 28 – a 75-year-old female Ruby Princess passenger who died in Caboolture hospital, north of Brisbane, the previous night, and a man in his 80s who died at a Melbourne hospital.

On Monday, March 30, a woman in her 80s died at North-West Regional Hospital, making her Tasmania’s first death and the country’s 17th.

The national capital’s first death came over the weekend, but was announced by ACT Health announced on Monday afternoon. The woman in her 80s died at Canberra Hospital after acquiring the disease overseas.

Tasmania reported its second death and the nation’s 19th on Tuesday, March 31. Premier Peter Gutwein said the elderly man in his 80s died at Royal Hobart Hospital.

The 20th death came on Tuesday, March 31. The 95-year-old woman was the ninth NSW death and the fifth Dorothy Henderson Lodge resident to die.

The majority of Australia’s coronavirus cases were acquired overseas.

Europe, the Americas and cruise ship travel are now the most common sources of infection, surpassing China.

People in their 20s make up the biggest proportion of confirmed COVID-19 cases due to the high number of returning travellers, with significantly more women than men testing positive in that age group.

Those in their 60s make up the second-largest group, followed by those in their 50s, 30s and 40s. Among those in their 40s, significantly more men than women have tested positive.

People in their 70s make up a smaller but still concerning number of total cases, while far fewer people aged over 80 or under 20 have been diagnosed.

The first case of COVID-19 was detected on January 25 in Victoria.

The patient was a man from Wuhan, Hubei province — where the Chinese virus emerged late last year — who flew to Melbourne from Guangdong on January 19.

Three more cases were detected the same day in NSW.

All three were men who had recently returned from China — two had been in Wuhan and one had direct contact with a confirmed case from the virus epicentre.

Since then, the number of cases has risen exponentially.

NSW quickly became ground zero for the Australian outbreak, and now makes up nearly half of all cases in the country.

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