A hospital in north-west Queensland says emergency department admissions have fallen by 20 per cent during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mount Isa emergency department director Ulrich Orda said there were a range of factors that contributed to the decline.
"I think there is a number of reasons, but one, of course, is everyone is now supposed to stay at home," Dr Orda said.
"You're not going out for sports, you're not doing anything outside, there is less risk of getting injured."
Dr Orda said physical distancing measures were also helping to stop the spread of respiratory diseases other than COVID-19.
"We have flu season now, so typically more severe respiratory tract infections that would present to the emergency department are lesser," he said.
But Dr Orda said he was concerned people were afraid to present at the hospital.
"At the moment it's probably more difficult to get an appointment with a GP, and in Mount Isa, we know, we do not have too many GPs anyway," he said.
"We just want to make sure that no-one stays at home and is seen by nobody, and then they get critically unwell before they present to the Emergency Department."
Physiotherapists feeling the pinch
With social sport off the table for Australians, physiotherapists are also seeing less patients.
Rockhampton physiotherapist Greg Muller said he had seen a sharp decline in clients when government restrictions were enforced.
"We've seen it really across all sectors, with gym closures and sports stopping, and then even elective surgeries being put on hold," he said.
"We are down probably about 30 per cent at the moment — early on there was a really steep drop off where we dropped 45 per cent in those first few weeks.
"Early on in the pandemic when there was a lot of uncertainty, particularly in a profession like physiotherapy where human touch is integral, we saw human touch being seen as a liability.
"That put a lot of people off coming in to get their physio done."
Mr Muller said the practice could see an influx in injuries when life starts to return to normal.
"The concern for people that have just stopped sport and aren't continuing some sort of level of physical fitness in the background, they will have deconditioned in this time," he said.
"If you haven't kept up the work and then you go back into a high level sport, you're at a higher risk of injuring yourself if your body is not used to those demands.
"I think we will see an uptake in rolled ankles and pulled hamstrings as result of getting back into sport too fast."
