Pressure is mounting on Australian states and territories to follow Tasmania and restrict entry to visitors, but health experts say that's not necessary.
Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein announced the tough new border measures that will require any "non-essential" travellers to isolate themselves for two weeks.
The measures come into effect from midnight on Friday but won't apply to health care workers, emergency workers, defence personnel, air and ship crew, specialists, and essential freight personnel.
"We know that for some it will create disruption, but our aim is to ensure that we protect the health, wellbeing and safety of Tasmanians," Mr Gutwein said.
Tasmania has restricted entry to the state due to the coronavirus. Source: Getty
Earlier this week, leading doctors in Western Australia called on the state government to restrict personal interestate travel to control the spread of the virus.
The Opposition backed the call, but Premier Mark McGowan has rejected the idea warning of damage to the economy.
In the Northern Territory, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of Alice Springs on Thursday called for the territory to be designed a "Special Control Area" and be sealed off from the rest of the country.
“This is really our only hope of preventing the NT from experiencing the type of exponential spread that is now being seen in Sydney, Melbourne and other Australian cities. More of the same will just give the same outcomes,” Donna Ah Chee, a spokespersons for the Combined Aboriginal Organisations said in a statement.
“We have to stop pretending that the health system will cope no matter how well prepared we try to make it. We don’t have the workforce or the infrastructure in intensive care to cope with the surge that will come if we let this pandemic unleash its full force on the NT,” she added.
But public health experts say that implementing tough border measures like Tasmania were not in the national interest.
“I don’t believe that equivalent measures in other states are warranted at the moment, nor would they be particularly helpful to the national response,” Associate Professor Adam Kamradt-Scott, an expert in the spread of infectious diseases at the University of Sydney, told SBS News.
“If we were to implement widespread border closures in each jurisdiction it would tie up a number of resources that are arguably better served elsewhere at the moment and the public health benefit would be questionable when the numbers of cases of locally-acquired coronavirus remains low."
Senior lecturer in public health at La Trobe University Hassan Vally said now was not the time to be closing state borders.
Public health experts said closing state borders was not the best response. Source: AAP
“Our states are like countries basically, if you look at the countries of Europe our states are just as big geographically and the difference between our states is quite vast,” he said.
He added that while not necessary or helpful now, there may be a point in the crisis in which closing state borders would be helpful.
“If there was one state that really took off further than the rest of the country, different states may need different strategies to protect their population,” he said.
“It's not unforeseeable that we have one state that does a lot worse than the rest of the country so they may need a different strategy,” Associate Professor Vally added.
Professor Stuart Tangye, from the University of New South Wales said that any action to limit the movement of people at the moment was helpful to stopping the spread of the virus.
“It’s easier to do it in Tasmania because they are an island. It would be a lot harder to control the New South Wales-Victoria border,” he said.
Associate Professor Kamradt-Scott said it was important to reassess where resources were best spent and that border closures could be considered in the future.
“There are times when measures such as border closures might be more beneficial, but we also need to appreciate we are one big country and we are in this together. And we need to be able to respond as a nation to the challenge we front,” he said.
