12 charts that show how coronavirus is spreading in Australia
The ABC has compiled the first public, national database showing COVID-19 cases.
As federal and state governments face criticism for failing to provide enough public information about the spread of coronavirus, the ABC has comAustralia has recorded six deaths and 43 recoveries from COVID-19, with more than 500 confirmed cases still current across the nation.
The figures come from a national database of confirmed COVID-19 cases, compiled by ABC News.
The database tracks confirmed cases by gender, age, location, source of infection and other information published in case reports from state and federal health authorities. It is supplemented with additional reporting by ABC News.
The figures include the details of every confirmed case since January 25, when NSW and Victoria reported the country's first four cases. It is updated daily to show the spread of the disease across Australia's states and territories.
The latest update was just before 7:30pm AEDT on Wednesday, March 18.
State and territory health authorities report 564 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia.
This includes 109 new cases in the past 24 hours, with NSW, Victoria and Queensland both recording their highest daily tally of new cases so far.
When a case is confirmed, health authorities undertake detailed tracing to identify the source of transmission.
Authorities have provided information about the potential source of transmission in less than half of confirmed cases..
Of these cases, most were acquired overseas, with overseas contact accounting for three times as many cases as transmission via local contact with a confirmed case.
However, these figures also reflect Australia's testing criteria, which limit testing to those who have travelled overseas in the 14 days before the onset of illness or who have had close contact in the 14 days before illness onset with a confirmed case of COVID-19.
Among those cases, the United States was the most common country visited, followed by Italy, China, Iran and the UK.
And while the Diamond Princess cruise ship is not a country, it remains one of the top sources of infection.
The database provides insight not only into how and where people are catching the disease but also who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Most confirmed cases are people in their 50s, followed by those in their 30s. In Australia, three times as many people in their 50s have been diagnosed with the virus, compared to people in their 70s.
However, this gap narrows when the numbers are adjusted for the number of people in each age group, with people in their 50s roughly twice as likely to be among the confirmed cases as those in their 70s.
Age-specific figures show people in their 50s have the highest infection rates, followed by people in their 60s.
Across the country, more men than women have tested positive for coronavirus but the figures vary significantly between the states and territories.
In Victoria, nearly twice as many men as women have been diagnosed with COVID-19, while the NT is the only state/territory without any confirmed cases.
(A previous version of this story said every state and territory had recorded at least one confirmed case. However, the only confirmed case in the NT was a resident of NSW, so this is now recorded in the data for NSW.)
A key measure used to track the spread of the virus is the rate at which the number of cases doubles. In Australia, it has taken four days for the number of cases to double.
That rate of growth is similar across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
NSW has the highest number of cases, making up 47 per cent of the total number of infections, followed by Victoria, then Queensland.
However, the picture shifts when population size is taken into account. Adjusting the figures for the number of residents shows NSW has the highest rate of infection per 100,000 residents, followed by SA, then Queensland.
The ACT has the lowest rate of infection, followed by Tasmania and WA.
Notes about this story:
Population figures sourced from ABS Australian Demographic Statistics, Jun 2019.
The 5th, 6th and 7th confirmed cases in Victoria have been assigned to the date they were first mentioned in official press releases. These cases were first announced on March 1, as having recovered from the virus.
Dates for the 7th and 8th confirmed cases in Queensland (Diamond Princess evacuees) are based on ABC News reports. The 9th confirmed Queensland case, another Diamond Princess evacuee, was first mentioned in a press release on March 3.