Australia is not in the same situation as the US at the moment, Professor Kelly has said.

"We must remember it is a terrible and tragic scene we are seeing in many parts of the US now in terms of the sheer numbers of cases that they are dealing with," he said.

"Keeping up with that would be extraordinarily difficult. We are not in that situation in Australia.

"The things that we have done in the past weeks to prevent ourselves going into that situation have been successful up till now and we have two redouble our efforts to make sure that doesn't happen into the future."

He said there was a "possibility" that COVID-19 related deaths could be missed.

"But we do know that we are being very clear and careful to anyone who is seeking hospitalisation for pneumonia, severe pneumonia without any other obvious cause, that they are being tested. If they were to die and it was in hospital, we would know that," he said.

Picture: Gary Ramage

Prof Kelly said there is a delay between cases and deaths as people tend to get sicker in the second week of having the virus.

"Unfortunately, people tend to get sicker in their second week, the ones that have the very severe disease," he said.

"But we're not going to see a lot of deaths from a few weeks ago at this stage.

"We are continuing to see around about the same number of cases each day with a little bit less, but we are going to continue to see cases over. The peak in terms of the daily cases was last week or the week before at the moment.

"Whether that is the final peak, I can't really say at this stage."