Internal medicine journal
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Internal medicine journal · Jan 2021
Multicenter StudyCOVID-19 in Australia: Our national response to the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the early biocontainment phase.
On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization recognised clusters of pneumonia-like cases due to a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). COVID-19 became a pandemic 71 days later. ⋯ This is a historical record of the first COVID-19 cases in Australia during the early biocontainment phase of the national response. These findings were invaluable for establishing early inpatient and outpatient COVID-19 models of care and informing the management of COVID-19 over time as the outbreak evolved. Future research should extend this Australian case series to examine global epidemiological variation of this novel infection.