How Melbourne scientists' coronavirus preparation puts Australia ahead of the world

After the World Health Organisation declared the zika virus a public health emergency of international concern in early 2016, a group of Melbourne clinicians and scientists realised it would have taken them weeks to respond.

But with global travel making it only a matter of time before pandemics threatened the entire world, they decided to set up a way to immediately characterise infectious diseases in returned travellers.

The result was the Sentinel Travellers and Research Preparedness for Emerging Infectious Disease platform – or SETREP-ID – overseen by The Doherty Institute with a network of investigators scattered throughout Victoria’s major hospitals.

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And, despite not knowing what threat the SETREP-ID would be enacted for, the group had pre-emptive ethical clearance to immediately gather samples from patients – something which would take weeks or months in other countries.

Despite testing the system with mock emergencies, the platform remained unused until Dr Thevarajan and her colleagues noted an unheralded alert from Wuhan.

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Although little was know of the novel coronavirus, SETREP-ID began devising a way to diagnose, test and treat any potential patients, which could be altered as new information emerged.

As soon as the first coronavirus infected person presented at a Melbourne hospital on January 25 the network was in place to test and diagnosed them. Immediately a sample was rushed to the Doherty Institute, so scientists could get to work.

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Within four weeks, the Melbourne team announced it had also mapped the way the human immune system responds to COVID-19 in detail, further boosting the global fight.

Without the pre-emptive preparations it would have taken weeks longer to respond to coronavirus, with consequences nobody wants to think about.