Health officials have one message for the Hunter after a dramatic drop-off in coronavirus transmissions: "Don't relax."
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The Hunter New England Health district recorded two new coronavirus cases on Monday and has registered just eight new positive tests in the past seven days.
Four of those days have been free of new cases.
A screening station at Belmont Hospital for people in the "hot spot" of east Lake Macquarie found no positives out of more than 1300 tests and the area is no longer on NSW Health's watch list.
Amid talk of relaxing restrictions and declining virus transmissions, HNEH public health physician David Durrheim said it would be a "great pity" if people became complacent.
"We do know that whenever a public health measure is successful, and particularly with infectious diseases and they become less common, people are inclined to relax, and we can't afford for that to happen," Dr Durrheim said.
The HNEH case total now stands at 278 after one new case in the Newcastle local government area in the 24 hours to 8pm on Sunday and one in Lake Macquarie.
The Newcastle case was in the inner-city 2300 postcode and the Lake Macquarie positive was in Windale.
Newcastle has had 55 confirmed cases since the pandemic began and Lake Macquarie 57.
NSW had six new cases on Sunday, the fewest since March 11, and Victoria one.
Dr Durrheim said Australia had skipped the worst-case scenario playing out in overseas countries.
"If we look at our television screens and we look at places where public health measures haven't been as rigorously applied as they have in Australia, we see the devastation that this virus has wrought," he said.
"We need to remind ourselves that could have been us but that we've all made a huge effort and we need to continue to sustain that effort."
Dr Durrheim said governments would provide "some reward" in terms of relaxations on the proviso there would be an "aggressive" response if the virus flared.
It was not time to contemplate eliminating the virus from the Hunter or Australia.
"Elimination is probably not plausible in Australia without really going even harder in terms of social isolation," Dr Durrheim said.
"What you have to do is find all of the virus and remove all opportunities for it to transmit."
Dr Durrheim said the effective transmission number had dropped to below one in every mainland state, which meant the virus was effectively dying out, but full elimination would only be possible if Australia's international borders remained closed.
He would not be drawn on whether community sport could resume in late winter, but he said Australia would enter the "dance" for several months of very gentle relaxation of rules, careful monitoring and rapid responses to outbreaks.
The NSW death toll stands at 30 after a 94-year-old resident of the Anglicare Newmarch House nursing home in western Sydney died of COVID-19 complications.
The nursing home has 41 confirmed cases, including 14 staff and 27 residents.
The national death toll is 71.
Dr Durrheim said the pandemic could lead to long-term changes to people's behaviour to prevent other communicable diseases like flu, which killed a record 1255 people in 2017, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The rate of people with flu-like symptoms this year is one sixth the level of 2019 thanks to social distancing and improved hygiene.
"We're going to find that society recalibrates itself after all of this, and some of the things around hygiene may be recalibrated into the future," Dr Durrheim said.
"We've seen some of our social norms already be really questioned, things like handshaking. Who would ever have thought we would question that?
"But probably it's a risky and unnecessary risk that's probably every year placing vulnerable people at risk of infectious diseases."
He said Asian populations had grown accustomed to wearing masks.
"Societies adapt, and through history we've seen this. We've all got used to that in some of our Asian neighbours the flu season is accompanied by mask wearing.
"We look at this and it's quite foreign to the way we do things, but society adapts.
"I think we'd be naive to think that society wouldn't adapt and the new normal may actually be seen as a very sensible thing.
"What that will look like I don't know yet."
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Michael Parris
Michael Parris reports on politics for the Newcastle Herald. He started at the Herald in 1994 after working in the ABC Newcastle newsroom. Michael spent much of his career as a sub-editor before moving into political reporting in 2017. He was a finalist in the Sports Australia national media awards for his stories about a male-only tennis club in Newcastle. He has covered NSW and federal elections, state and federal budgets and local politics. He has also written extensively about the COVID-19 pandemic with a special focus on data analysis and the effects of lockdowns on the Hunter community.
Michael Parris reports on politics for the Newcastle Herald. He started at the Herald in 1994 after working in the ABC Newcastle newsroom. Michael spent much of his career as a sub-editor before moving into political reporting in 2017. He was a finalist in the Sports Australia national media awards for his stories about a male-only tennis club in Newcastle. He has covered NSW and federal elections, state and federal budgets and local politics. He has also written extensively about the COVID-19 pandemic with a special focus on data analysis and the effects of lockdowns on the Hunter community.
