Health officials warn human-to-human coronavirus transmission in Victoria is inevitable but have called for calm, urging people not to panic-buy as supermarket shelves are emptied of non-perishable items including toilet paper. The 10th person in Victoria to contract the virus is a man in his 30s who arrived in Melbourne from Iran on February 26. He did not start showing symptoms until Sunday, March 1, and went to an emergency department after speaking with an on-call nurse. A test for coronavirus came back positive on Tuesday night. The man is now almost symptom-free and has been isolating himself at home. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

There are now 1700 people in Victoria who have been tested for the virus and returned a negative result, including a man who arrived on a plane at Avalon Airport on Tuesday. However, Premier Daniel Andrews warned coronavirus would soon reach pandemic levels. "We’re still in the containment phase. It is highly likely that we will get to that pandemic phase at some point," he said. According to the World Health Organisation, a pandemic, colloquially, refers to a "new pathogen that spreads easily from person to person across the globe". The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Australia was 44 on Wednesday night. Queensland officials are desperately trying to track down plane passengers who sat near a 26-year-old man who has tested positive for coronavirus after travelling to Brisbane from Iran. He is the 11th person in Queensland to have been diagnosed with the illness.

And Western Australia's Health Minister, Roger Cook, has vowed to open fever clinics next week after photos emerged of patients seeking treatment for flu-like symptoms in a makeshift quarantine zone in a hospital car park. Some passengers on a Virgin Melbourne-bound flight en route to Tasmania have also been told to "self-quarantine" for 14 days after sharing the plane with a man who later tested positive for coronavirus. The infected Australian man was on the flight from Iran to Launceston via Melbourne on Saturday. He travelled on flight VA-1368, which left Tullamarine airport at 1.10pm.

The man went grocery shopping at a Woolworths store in Launceston when he was meant to be in self-isolation at home. He went to the supermarket for about 15 minutes on his way home after being tested in hospital. "The man visited the supermarket after being told of the requirements of self-quarantine," Tasmania's Public Health Director Mark Veitch said. "The risk to anyone who was in the supermarket at that time is very low. However, it is appropriate to fully inform staff and customers who were there." The Victorian government has foreshadowed delays to elective surgeries once the disease begins to spread more rapidly as hospitals will need to reserve capacity for fever clinics and isolated wards to treat infected patients.

Loading Some Melbourne hospitals have started hiring coronavirus managers on short-term contracts as they assemble dedicated teams to respond to the spread of the disease. Late last week, Western Health advertised a minimum four-week role for a "COVID-19 taskforce medical officer" to be based at Sunshine Hospital. Western Health operates Sunshine, Footscray and Williamstown hospitals, plus five other health services in Melbourne's western suburbs. The position, which comes "with the potential to extend", was open to doctors with general medical experience.

Loading Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has said stockpiling essential supplies including canned or dried food was a smart idea, but urged people to use common sense. "Make sure you have preparations around how you would look after yourself if you were ill at home and how you would look after a loved one," Dr Sutton told radio station 3AW. Dr Sutton said he understood the anxiety around coronavirus as dramatic scenes of the outbreak unfolded overseas, but consumers emptying supermarket shelves and buying months' worth of groceries or toilet paper in a day was unnecessary. "Nobody needs to do that because we aren't suddenly going to be in a situation tomorrow where we suddenly have 100 more cases," he said.

"People can and should think about [buying] dry goods and other essential items every time they go shopping. We don't want people to run out of food if they have to be at home for two weeks and don't have a mechanism to have food delivered. We don't want them to run out of medicine or run out of pet food." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video A 53-year-old Sydney doctor became Australia's first locally contracted coronavirus case on Monday, having been in direct contact with patients before he became seriously unwell. A NSW woman also tested positive for the virus after contracting it from her brother who had recently visited Iran. Perth man James Kwan, 78, died at the weekend at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital after contracting the illness aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship.