A midnight email. A Friday-night webinar with a Canadian scientist. A conversation with NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant. In this edited extract of a new book on Australia’s COVID-19 responses, Age journalists pinpoint the intriguing events that helped save tens of thousands of lives in Australia.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.The premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, had just spent a mild summer’s day crabbing with his three children near Dawesville, a coastal suburb 85 kilometres south of Perth, when his phone lit up. It was Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison.
The chain of events that culminated with a ban on foreigners who had recently been in China began with a midnight email from the director of epidemiology at the Doherty Institute, Professor Jodie McVernon, to Australia’s chief medical officer, Professor Brendan Murphy., yet to be published.
Professor Eddie Holmes has been an influential figure in the pandemic. He was the first to share the COVID-19’s genomic sequence, resulting in the development of the first COVID vaccine.In a twist of sorts that would fuel the laboratory-escape theory for years to come, RaTG13 was being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, about 30 kilometres from the Wuhan seafood market.
Holmes quickly helped to convene a now-infamous teleconference with some of the biggest global names in infectious diseases and virology on Saturday, February 2. They included Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Francis Collins, the director of the US National Institutes of Health; and virologists Christian Drosten and Marion Koopmans.The audio hook-up was at 6am Sydney time.
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