Australia has recorded its first death from Covid-19 after authorities confirmed a man in his late 70s died at a Perth hospital on Sunday.
The Western Australian chief health officer, Andrew Robertson, said the man was in an intensive care unit when he died in the early hours of Sunday morning. The man’s wife was diagnosed with the coronavirus a few days ago and is now in a stable condition, he added.
Asked if the man’s age or prior health had been a factor, Robertson noted people of his age were more “likely to have other chronic conditions” which could make it harder to fight off the disease. The man was diagnosed at Howard Springs, Northern Territory, about 10 days ago.
“There is no risk to general community or to staff,” Robertson said. “He was in a negative pressure room and then in intensive care.”
The couple were among more than 150 Australians who were isolated on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The man’s family had managed to speak with him on Saturday night through an isolation window before his death on Sunday morning.
Robertson said he was concerned about people panicking, saying “we need to make the point very clear there isn’t community spread in Australia”.
“It doesn’t change anything for the status of coronavirus,” Robertson said. “We always knew it would be a serious virus, especially for the elderly.”
“This very tragic case is related to the Diamond Princess, so the community shouldn’t be panicking at this stage,” he added.
Confirmation of the first Australian death came as the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, said it was “not possible” to extend a travel ban to all countries affected by the rapidly spreading coronavirus, as he defended the government’s decision to restrict travel from Iran, but not South Korea where more cases have been reported.
With the government preparing for a global pandemic of the virus and fresh cases of exposure being reported on the Gold Coast and New South Wales over the weekend from people returning from Iran, Dutton said the government believed Iran should be included in the ban because the data coming out of the country was not reliable.
“If you look at the underreporting or the lack of reporting coming out of Iran to start with … there was a real concern as to whether they had a handle on the numbers,” Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“Obviously, South Korea has a more advanced health system and they have been reporting numbers for a period of time. So I think they are key differences between those different markets,” he said.
“As the chief medical officer has pointed out, it’s not possible to extend the ban to every country, and we’ll see what phase we move into next.”
There have been 388 cases of the virus reported out of Iran, compared to 2,300 in South Korea, but Iran has recorded 43 of the 106 deaths that have occurred outside of China.
Worldwide, more than 85,000 are reported to have the virus, with more than 2,900 deaths across 58 countries.
On Sunday, a man in his 40s who had recently travelled to Iran became the fifth person in NSW to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, and the second diagnosed after recent travel to Iran.
A Gold Coast woman is the other case, with health authorities attempting to track down about 40 people who attended appointments with the 63-year-old beautician at the Hair Plus salon at Australia Fair at Southport before she was diagnosed with the virus and isolated.
The new travel restrictions, announced on Sunday, will mean Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family will be required to self-isolate at home for 14 days from the day they left Iran, while foreign nationals will be banned from entering Australia for 14 days since they left the country.
The NSW chief health officer, Kerry Chant, said travellers from Iran needed to be “particularly vigilant” for symptoms, given the rapid increase in the virus activity in recent days.
The travel ban also remains in place for China, with the decision preventing the arrival of an estimated 4,000 Chinese foreign nationals each day. The tourism and education sectors are most affected.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, has asked the Australian health protection principal committee to consider whether the government has the appropriate level of travel advice in place for Italy, which has seen an outbreak of the virus and so far recorded eight deaths.
“I have specifically asked them today to consider whether or not the current arrangements need to be changed in any way, shape or form,” he said.