Your questions about the novel coronavirus - COVID-19 - answered:
Dr Kat Taylor, Hunter New England Health public health controller for the COVID-19 response, answers some of the frequently asked questions about coronavirus and the current situation:
Q: Do the parents of a student who has been advised to go into isolation need to isolate too?
A: The advice is they do need to minimise contact with the person within their household as much as possible - that's what self-isolation means. But they themselves are considered "contacts of contacts", and for that reason they don't have any restrictions placed on them.
That would change if the person in their household subsequently became sick and tested positive.
It is very very tricky to explain, and a lot of people are getting tied up on that.
But we do have good availability of testing, so anyone with even the mildest of symptoms should self-isolate and seek testing.
Q: How do you work out the infectious period of a confirmed COVID-19 case?
A: We go from the symptom onset and go 48 hours before that to find the initial onset of when we think they were infectious.
When we try to work out where somebody picked it up from, we take it from the time they developed symptoms and go back 14 days, which covers the incubation period.
Q: How do you decide if a venue needs to be closed for thorough cleaning after a COVID-19 case has attended the premises?
A: It is only when a case has spent a prolonged period at the venue - so longer than two hours, and Hunter New England does do a risk assessment based on specific venue locations for each situation.
