"Whilst we have seen encouraging numbers today, we are going to have to look at how things develop on a day by day basis."

Dr Coatsworth said health professionals in Australia were facing "exceptionally difficult" circumstances and authorities did not want hospitals overrun with coronavirus patients like Italy and the United States.

But he was confident there would be enough hospital beds to meet demand in coming weeks.

"We are preparing for a 200 per cent increase in intensive care bed capacity across the nation.

"We are working every day to make sure we have got sufficient ventilators and support materials so that we can care for patients, if the worst does come to worst."

He said Australia currently had more than 2000 intensive care beds, with surge capacity for 4000. He said hospitals hoped to increase that capacity to more than 7000 beds.

There are currently 48 patients with coronavirus in intensive care.

Dr Coatsworth said there were virus clusters "across the socio-economic spectrum" and "no-one in this society is going to be immune to coronavirus".

"What we actually need is for every single Australian to beat the virus, remembering I've said often that the virus has only got one move. It's got to get from one person to another.

"If we don't want to get to anywhere near like Italy, and I don't want to see anywhere near the strain that the Italian health system is under, then we actually have to, as individuals, practice that distancing from people and all the measures that the government has been asking us to do for the past several weeks."