n 12 March, two weeks after Australia declared the coronavirus would become a pandemic and 47 days after the first case in Australia was detected in Melbourne, the World Health Organisation made it official. That night, in Melbourne, organisers of the Australian Grand Prix were scrambling to keep the event open despite an 11th hour order from Victoria’s chief health officer that they could run the race but had to turn spectators away. It would be the first major event in Australia to be cancelled by the coronavirus. Within 24 hours, almost every other flagship event planned for the next month would follow suit. This is the first 50 days of the shutdown. Day 1 – Friday 13 March Spectators queue outside Albert Park in Melbourne for two hours, before the organisers confirm the Australian Grand Prix has been cancelled. Six hours later, Scott Morrison and Australia’s premiers and chief ministers announce that mass gatherings – events with more than 500 participants – should not take place from Monday onward. They also announce the establishment of a national cabinet to respond to the coronavirus crisis. A level three travel warning is placed against the whole world, with Australians told to avoid unnecessary international travel. The announcement is made in the Council of Australian Governments meeting (Coag), held in person in Sydney. It is the last time they are all in one room. The prime minister goes in for a handshake with the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, but is rebuffed. Saturday is the round-one NRL match between Morrison’s team, the Cronulla Sharks, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs. He tells reporters at the Coag press call at 4pm that he still intends to go. By 8pm, Morrison has reneged on his football attendance, saying it might be misinterpreted. The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has tested positive to coronavirus, but his cabinet colleagues are not tested. And the Melbourne Comedy festival, Melbourne Fashion festival and Sydney Royal Easter Show have been cancelled. Australia has 156 cases of coronavirus. Day 3 – Sunday 15 March National cabinet holds its first meeting on the anniversary of the Christchurch massacre. Australia now has 250 cases. Quarantine rules are broadened. From midnight, all international arrivals are required to self-isolate for 14 days, unless they are airline or maritime crew, or transitioning through Australia to the Pacific Islands. The order extends to cruise ship passengers. States and territories will enforce these rules under public health orders. Morrison says there is unanimous agreement from states and territories that schools should remain open following the advice of national cabinet’s health advisory body, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. He says that once a shutdown measure is introduced it is likely to remain in place for six months. The next morning, Morrison does five media interviews. In four, he is asked why schools remain open. School attendance in NSW has dropped 25%. Day 6 – Wednesday 18 March Victorian school attendance has fallen by up to 50%. A fake text message is circulating warning the country would go into an immediate lockdown, and the prime minister bristles when asked about it. “Twitter is not real life … so don’t believe it,” he says. The national chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, says a two to four week shutdown called for by many commentators “does not achieve anything”. National cabinet meets. Travel advice to the whole world is upgraded to level four: do not travel. Domestic travel is still allowed. Indoor gatherings of more than 100 people are now banned. Schools can remain open, but assemblies are cancelled. Singapore is held up as an example – it has managed the virus effectively while keeping schools open. Anzac Day ceremonies are cancelled. Restrictions are placed on visiting aged care facilities. Visits are capped at a maximum of two people per day, with visits to be kept to a short duration. Recently returned travellers, anyone with a respiratory infection, and children under 16 are told to stay away. In the evening, the Ruby Princess cruise ship arrives in Sydney harbour. Day 7 – Thursday 19 March At 6am health officials give the all-clear for the 2,700 passengers aboard the cruise ship Ruby Princess to disembark. About 110 have influenza-like symptoms. Three are swabbed, but the rest are not made to wait for the results. They go home, many boarding domestic flights to other states, carrying the virus with them. Within five weeks at least 662 passengers on the Ruby Princess will have tested positive to Covid-19 and 21 will have died. Later, Scott Morrison announces that Australia’s borders are now closed to non-citizens and residents. Australians are urged to return home as soon as possible. The Reserve Bank announces a $105bn boost to the economy and cuts the cash rate to 0.25%. The next day, after a national cabinet meeting, the ban on indoor gatherings is refined to include a requirement of 4sqm space per person. Restaurants will have to change their tables accordingly. Schools remain open, but Tasmania does not: the island state announces that anyone who enters will face a 14-day quarantine. Day 10 – Sunday 22 March The jobseeker payment is effectively doubled to a minimum base rate of $1,115.70, with an announcement of a fortnightly coronavirus support payment of $550. The payment will remain in place for six months. It’s part of the $66bn second economic stimulus package, which includes a provision to allow sole traders and those eligible for welfare to draw down their superannuation by up to $10,000 a year for the next two years. Loans for small and medium sized businesses are announced. National cabinet meets and decides on the first major round of closures: all pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants, excluding takeaway, will be closed from 12pm Monday. Gyms, indoor sporting venues, cinemas, casinos, nightclubs and entertainment venues are also closed. Schools remain open, but are encouraged to provide access to online education. Crowds at Bondi beach on Saturday are blamed for the “draconian measures to enforce social distancing” that will be introduced and policed by the states in coming weeks. The national cabinet meeting is preceded by matching announcements from the NSW and Victorian premiers, saying they are considering a ban on all non-essential services. Victoria and the ACT will close schools from Tuesday, starting the Easter school holidays early. Morrison says he is not annoyed. At the press conference following the national cabinet meeting, ABC political editor Andrew Probyn inadvertently becomes a TikTok meme. Australia passes 1,000 cases on Saturday. By Sunday it’s 1,316 cases – an increase of 213 in 24 hours. Twenty-six of those cases are from the Ruby Princess. On Monday, thousands of people queue for Centrelink. The queues start forming at 4am and stretch around the block. The pattern is repeated all week. Day 12 – Tuesday 24 March National cabinet decides on further restrictions. Auction houses, real estate auctions, eating in shopping centre food courts, amusement parks, play centres, beauty parlours, tattoo parlours, and haircuts that take longer than 30 minutes are banned. The haircut time limit is lifted two days later. Gatherings are restricted to groups of 10 when outdoors. That includes funerals. Weddings are limited to five people – the couple, the celebrant and two witnesses. Australians must stay home unless they’re going out for an essential purpose, and the definition of essential is broadened. “Now, if you ask me who is an essential worker?” Morrison says. “Someone who has a job.” Domestic travel restrictions on entering Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory come into force. Those who arrive after today will have to self-isolate for 14-days. Queensland is to follow on Wednesday. The international travel warning is upgraded to a travel ban. The next day, all non-urgent elective surgery is suspended. Shock jock Alan Jones, who usually shows little sympathy to those on welfare, says it should be easier to get the dole. In New Zealand, a four week lockdown is announced. It will begin on Thursday. Day 15 – Friday 27 March. Prince Charles and Boris Johnson have coronavirus. The United States passes China as the country with the most number of cases. Globally, the number of cases has topped half a million with 22,993 deaths. Australia’s total case tally has topped 3,000, doubling in just three days. The daily incidence peak is hit on 28 March. National cabinet announces that from midnight Saturday, all returning international travellers will have to complete their mandatory 14-day quarantine in a hotel. A ban on non-essential travel into remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory comes into effect. Day 17 – Sunday 29 March Gatherings are now limited to two people, excluding people who live together. Some states will take this further to ban people from interacting unless they are exercising together or acting as a carer. People over the age of 70 are advised to effectively self-isolate, as are people with chronic disease or comorbidities who are over the age of 60, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples over the age of 50. The national cabinet announces a moratorium on evictions from commercial or residential tenancies for six months, but enforcement is slow and varies between jurisdictions. The curve is beginning to flatten, with the rate of growth dropping from 35% to 15%. To date, 208,000 tests have been conducted, and 3,898 cases have been confirmed. About 98% of tests are negative. Australia is testing more than four times the number of people per head of population than the UK, and more people per head of population than South Korea. Day 18 – Monday 30 March The Australian government announces a $130bn wage subsidy package called jobkeeper. Eligible businesses will receive $1,500 per employee per fortnight, to be paid in full directly to the employee, if they can show a significant loss in revenue. It brings the total value of economic stimulus packages announced to $320bn, or 16.4% of GDP. Victoria and Queensland both issue their first fine on a business for breaching social distancing laws. States and territories release new public health orders, detailing the strict enforcement of the stay at home rules, with on-the-spot fines of $1,000 or more. Journalists spend the next few days seeking clarity on whether the laws restrict visits from romantic partners. Three days later, the federal government announces that childcare will be free for six months. Day 24 – Sunday 5 April Police in New South Wales announce a criminal investigation into the Ruby Princess cruise ship debacle, which is now the single largest source of coronavirus infections in Australia. Some 662 of the 5,687 coronavirus cases reported in Australia are from that ship, as are 11 of the 34 deaths. The global coronavirus tally passed 1 million cases two days ago. At 11.59pm the hard border in WA comes into effect. Only residents or those who meet a set criteria for entry are now allowed through. Queensland will strengthen it border restrictions from 11 April. NSW, Queensland and Victoria are stricter in their enforcement of social distancing rules than other states. Two days ago, the WA premier, Mark McGowan, was overcome with laughter at a description of a man in NSW being fined for stopping to buy a kebab on the way home from a run. Soon, police would be accused of being too heavy handed and discriminatory in their use of the unfettered powers to stop people and judge the reason for being outside. On 7 April, Scott Morrison says the Easter long weekend could cause another spike in cases. “Stay at home,” he says. “Failure to do so this weekend would completely undo everything we have achieved so far together, and potentially worse.” April brings a change in the type of questions asked at press conferences. Where in March reporters asked for tougher restrictions – (Why not an immediate four week lockdown? Why are schools still open?) – April sees calls for the lockdown measures to be lifted. Rightwing pundits reach for utilitarianism and argue the prime minister is letting his Christianity get in the way of economic pragmatism. Day 31 – Sunday 12 April Easter Sunday. There is an outbreak in Tasmania. The premier, Peter Gutwein, announces the immediate closure of two hospitals in the state’s north-west and orders 1,000 healthcare workers – and the 4,000 people they live with – to quarantine for 14 days. The area is now under the strictest lockdown provisions in the country. All non-essential business is banned. The outbreak is traced back to two passengers of the Ruby Princess cruise ship, who were the first two people to die in Tasmania after testing positive to Covid-19. Murphy repeats rumours to a New Zealand parliamentary committee that the virus spread because healthcare workers held an illegal dinner party, but a police investigation would later find there was no evidence to suggest such a party occurred. The health services union says the spread was due to doctors and nurses working across infected wards. Five days later, the prime minister will also be slapped down by Tasmanian authorities for incorrectly suggesting a healthcare worker had deliberately withheld information from contact tracers. Day 35 – Thursday 16 April The first hearing of the royal commission into the summer bushfires, a crisis that was for one month the defining issue of the year, is held via videolink. The national cabinet agrees to lift social distancing restrictions if three conditions are met. They are: boosting the testing regime to include extensive surveillance or sentinel testing of asymptomatic people; stronger contact tracing, including the use of a tracing app; and improved local response capability to quickly shut down any new outbreaks. If that happens and the basic reproduction number remains below one – meaning that each infection leads to less than one new infection – then, in four weeks, restrictions may be lifted. Every state except Tasmania currently has a reproduction rate of less than one. Restrictions will loosen gradually, Morrison says. Singapore is now a warning: lift restrictions too quickly and you could face a second wave. Day 39 – Monday 20 April Western Australia and Queensland join South Australia and the Northern Territory in reporting no new cases of coronavirus. It’s the first day without a new case in WA since 21 February. South Australia has just made three days in a row, despite expanding its testing regime. Nationally, it’s the lowest daily new case count since early March, with just 26 new cases. For the past nine days, the average daily growth rate has been less than 1%. The curve is bent. More than two-thirds of the country’s 6,613 cases have now recovered, and 434,000 tests have been completed. The next day, the national cabinet announces it will lift the ban on many types of non-urgent elective surgery from 27 April. Virgin Australia, Australia’s second biggest airline, goes into administration. Day 42 – Thursday 23 April The Ruby Princess departs Australia for the Philippines with 500 crew members onboard. A NSW inquiry investigating the debacle holds its second day of hearings. The tax office has approved 456,000 applications from people seeking early access to their superannuation, with an average withdrawal of $8,000. Centrelink has processed 587,686 jobseeker applications, more than they usually would in a year. More than 900,000 businesses have expressed interest in the jobkeeper payment, and 275,000 have made formal applications. Brendan Murphy tells a parliamentary select committee that to ease restrictions Australia would have to be able to “test like we’ve never tested before”. WA premier Mark McGowan, asked at a Perth press conference when he would ease restrictions, says: “It’s a funny thing. A few weeks ago I was literally being screamed at to lock down, lock down everything. Now the calls are that we need to open up.” He said that schools were expected to return to onsite learning from Monday and parents should demand a refund from private schools that don’t comply. The next day, Morrison rebukes the aged care sector for going above the recommended restrictions and denying visitors even when no outbreak has been detected. Murphy announces that all states have expanded their testing regimes, the first step in establishing sentinel testing. Responding to comments made by US president Donald Trump, Murphy says he would “caution against the injection of disinfectants” as a potential treatment for Covid-19. Another outbreak is unfolding at an aged care home in western Sydney. Day 44 – Saturday 25 April The prime minister’s Anzac Day address from the Australian War Memorial is broadcast live into homes because ceremonies and marches are cancelled. Instead, lit candles are placed in driveways. The next day, the government releases the Covidsafe app, designed to assist contact tracing by making a record of everyone a user has been in contact with for more than 15 minutes. The information can only be accessed by state health authorities and is automatically deleted after 21 days. The use of the app is not compulsory, but it is linked to an easing of restrictions. “If we want to get back to sport then we need to download the app,” Morrison says. By Wednesday evening, the app has three million downloads and the federal government has a new catchphrase: “for a covid-safe Australia, download the Covidsafe app. Day 47 – Tuesday 28 April Gladys Berejiklian follows Mark McGowan and Annastacia Palaszczuk in announcing a relaxation of social distancing laws. Berejiklian says the change – which allows people to visit family and friends without being penalised – is a mental health measure. “I’ll still be standing outside the house when I visit my parents,” she says. The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, says he does not intend to loosen his state’s lockdown provisions, which expire on 11 May. That’s also the target date for the AHPPC reviewing stay-at-home measures. In Western Australia, people are now allowed to gather in groups of 10 either indoors or outdoors. Hiking, boating, fishing, camping, and holding a picnic or a barbecue are all now permitted, but regional travel restrictions and the hard border remain in place. Four people die at western Sydney aged care home Newmarch House in a 24-hour period, bringing the number of deaths at that facility linked to the coronavirus to 11. Managers at the centre say they expect more deaths to follow. The Logies are cancelled, followed by the Royal Melbourne Show. The number of cases in the United States passes one million, with a death toll of 58,220 – more than the number of US lives lost in the Vietnam War. Day 50 – Friday, 1 May The Australian Capital Territory enters the day with no active cases of Covid-19, with 103 people recovered and three dead. Loosened restrictions in New South Wales and Queensland take effect. North of the border, family groups are allowed to go for picnics or to a national park; to eat a takeaway meal outside instead of scurrying back into their homes; to take a leisure drive within a 50km radius of their home address; and to shop for frivolities. In New South Wales, people are allowed to have up to two visitors in their home, or visit other people. In the Northern Territory, which has not had a new case of Covid-19 in weeks, the parks are reopened. Fishing, camping, outdoor weddings and funerals and attending the local swimming pool are back on the cards. In two weeks’ time residents will be allowed to go to the pub, provided they only stay for two hours and also order food. By 18 June, according to a plan outlined by chief minister Michael Gunner, everything will be back to normal. The national cabinet moves forward its decision on easing restrictions to next Friday, 8 May. “We need to restart our economy, we need to restart our society. We can’t keep Australia under the doona, we need to move ahead,” Morrison says.