AFTER a week in which we realised coronavirus was again "on our doorstop", we should know in a few days whether a feared community spread has been nipped in the bud, as appears, for now, to be the case.
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No new cases were reported over the weekend in the Hunter New England Local Health District, with the NSW government postcode "heat map" showing one active case in Port Stephens, two in Lake Macquarie and three in Hamilton.
The latter are presumably the three brothers mentioned by Hunter Health, whose positive tests resulted in the closures and deep cleaning of St Pius X at Adamstown and St Francis Xavier's College, Hamilton.
On one hand, it is a credit both to a legion of contract tracers, and the federal government's COVIDSafe app, that the authorities can build such a detailed picture of the progress of the virus, even when numbers explode as they have in Victoria.
On the other hand, we must take care to ensure that those who find themselves even briefly in the spotlight over a positive test are not unfairly blamed for something our governments regard, conceptually, as inevitable.
Hopefully, the Hunter will pass this week without an explosion of cases.
The NSW government's efforts in encouraging people to wear masks appear to be working, even if hidden faces are still a minority in our shopping centres and other public places.
More young women appear happy wearing masks, but they are seen less frequently on young men.
This reluctance may yet become an issue, for while COVID-19 Australian death and illness is weighted heavily to older people, the statistics show case numbers skewed the other way.
People aged 20 to 29 have the greatest number of cases, with more than 20 per cent of the total.
They are also most heavily represented, in relative terms, when case numbers are adjusted for the size of the age group as a portion of the overall population.
Federal deputy chief deputy medical officer Nick Coatsworth weighed into this territory on Saturday, when he urged young people to go easy on the "pub crawl" and the "socialising".
As Dr Coatsworth pointed out, there is the risk of catching the virus, or, having unknowingly caught it, passing it on to someone else, And that could be someone whose infection with COVID-19 results in the worst of consequences.
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