When will the coronavirus lockdown end? Expert reveals why he believes life in Australia could return to normal quicker than you think - but warns the next two weeks are absolutely critical

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Life in Australia could start slowly returning to normal in a month - but only if the rate of coronavirus infection keeps falling, experts predict.

The country is partially locked down under stage three restrictions that ban gatherings and, in some states, people leaving their homes except for work and exercise.

Australia appears to be flattening the curve with the daily increase in cases dropping to just 7.3 per cent on Tuesday, well down from about 25 per cent a week ago.

There were 4,561 cases on Tuesday night and 19 deaths before a 20th fatality on Wednesday morning - still a far lower death and case rate than most countries. 

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Sunbathing in groups of no more than two (with better social distancing than this) may be allowed again within weeks if coronavirus infections keep trending down

Infectious disease experts like University of NSW associate professor James Wood believe this could lead to the government easing restrictions in weeks.

Denmark is already planning to roll back its own restrictions this month as its infection rates and hospital admissions fall faster than expected.

However, other academics believe coronavirus could peak in Australia as late as November and lockdowns will stay for at least six months and could get harsher. 

Dr Wood said the next two weeks were critical in determining whether Australia was really flattening the curve and if and when life might get easier.

'By the end of the Easter break we should have a good idea of if our current measures are working,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'There's a sense that we will learn what restrictions work the best, and maybe we don't need some of them.'

Depending on those results and the curve trajectory, lower risk behaviour - such as sunbathing with good social distancing - may be allowed to resume. 

Some shops could potentially also trade again to ease the economic crisis, but the borders reopening was not on the horizon.

Australia's increase in coronavirus cases has plummeted in the past few days, falling from a 26.2 per cent jump on March 22 to just 9.4 per cent on Sunday. This graph shows the number of new cases each day since March 12 in red - they sharply rise until a week ago when they begin to flatten out. As shown by the black line, though the number of new cases a day is still higher than early in the outbreak, the rate of increase has dropped dramatically and is still falling

Some shops that were shut to stem the outbreak could also reopen before winter as politicians balance falling infection rates with the economic crisis

Dr Wood expected case numbers would continue to flatten out and the infection rate go down over the course of April, given Australia's borders are closed.

There would be an jump in hospital and ICU admissions from the rush of overseas arrivals as the travel ban came into place, but not as many would replace them.

The key was if community transmission, which has shown signs of taking off in NSW, became a serious problem that could trigger a renewed outbreak.

'Two or three weeks of doing what we're doing to see how well it works, and then we may see some changes, be they more or less restrictive,' Dr Wood said. 

'The next few weeks and couple of months will feel like a long time, everyone's going to get stir crazy. 

'But the consequences of not controlling this thing are spectacularly bad.'

Dr Wood said state premiers and Prime Minister Scott Morrison would be wary of relaxing measures too soon, but would balance it with the economy. 

'It would be a brave politician to relax things because if they do and things get worse they'll not come out looking very good,' he said.

'On the other hand you have hundreds of thousands of people out of work.'

However, it was unlikely Australians would be taking overseas holidays any time soon as keeping the borders closed was effective and the rest of the world is still badly gripped by the pandemic

Strict social distancing of 1.5m would continue to be critical for months to come and if not followed then it would take longer for restrictions to ease

Dr Wood said the two most important measures were quarantining every arrival in Australia in hotels for 14 days, as brought in on Sunday, and contact tracing.

South Korea and other Asian countries that have arrested their outbreaks utilised intense contact tracing to find everyone who could be potentially infected and isolate them.

'Travellers need to stay in hotels because then public health has more time to trace cases and contacts,' he said.

'It's a pretty extreme thing but it's about making our public health response more effective.

'The better we do at contact tracing, the less we will need other restrictions.'

However, for the same reasons, it was unlikely Australians would be taking overseas holidays any time soon.

'I think they will keep [the travel bans and quarantine] in place at least until the European and North American epidemics have subsided because that's where almost all our cases have come from,' Dr Wood said. 

'You can't expect the epidemics in Europe and North America to pass for two to three months. And then the issue is that it's everywhere else (in the world) now.'

Experts said on of the two most important measures was quarantining every arrival in Australia in hotels for 14 days, as brought in on Sunday (a family is pictured isolated at the Novotel Brisbane)

Two travellers appeared to still be recovering from their long-haul flight into Sydney as one was seen giving the other a foot massage at the Intercontinental Hotel

Dr Wood predicted it would be at least six months until the whole globe had the pandemic contained, but a vaccine was needed to be completely safe.

Travel to countries that had all but eradicated coronavirus could potentially begin earlier while the rest of the world was still shunned, but this may be unworkable.

However, Dr Wood cautioned that Australia's recovery could be thrown completely into disarray if COVID-19 was more difficult to control in winter. 

'The spanner in the works is that it might become more transmissible in winter,' he said.

'If things don't get better, or they get worse, if we're going to do something more serious (in terms of stricter lockdowns) it would be in winter time.

'The hope is that it's over by the time winter bites, but it's just speculation at this point as to whether that will happen and what that would mean.'

Other experts are far less optimistic and predict Australia could be stuck with crippling lockdowns for the rest of the year. 

Denmark plans to begin lifting lockdown restrictions in April

By Ryan Fahey for MailOnline

Denmark could begin lifting lockdown restrictions in April after declaring the contact limits it implemented on March 11 have 'succeeded'.

The Nordic country, which has reported 77 coronavirus-related deaths, last week extended until after Easter a two-week lockdown to limit physical contact between its citizens that began on March 11.

'We do see signs that we have succeeded in delaying the transmission of corona in Denmark. The transmission is spreading slower than feared,' Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. 

'Over the past week the number of hospital admissions has risen slightly slower than the week before and without the explosion in the numbers that we have seen in other countries.' 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks during a news conference on COVID-19 coronavirus disease at her office in Copenhagen, Denmark yesterday 

The Social Democrat leader, whose response to the crisis has been praised by the public, offered a glimmer of hope for Danes cooped up under lockdown.  

'If we over the next two weeks across Easter keep standing together by staying apart, and if the numbers remain stable for the next two weeks, then the government will begin a gradual, quiet and controlled opening of our society again, at the other side of Easter,' she said.

However, Frederiksen warned that if numbers began to rise once lockdown is over 'perhaps we would have to tighten up even more instead'.       

Denmark has imposed less strict limits on daily life than in Italy or France where people are only free to leave their homes to buy groceries, go to work if essential or seek medical care.

Danish authorities have restricted public assembly to 10 or fewer people, ordered the closure of schools, universities, day cares, restaurants, cafes, libraries, gyms and hair salons, and shut all borders to most foreigners.

A reopening would probably include people attending schools and work in shifts to avoid rush-hour traffic and too many people gathering in public at the same time, Frederiksen said.

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A mother is seen outside a Chemist Warehouse store in Sydney having her temperature checked

However, other exdperts like Professor Raina Macintyre (pictured) from the Kirby Institute at the UNSW suggested it would still be many months before life is returned to normal

Professor Raina Macintyre from the Kirby Institute at the UNSW - a global body dedicated to preventing infectious diseases - suggested it would still be many months before life is returned to normal. 

'It's going to get worse before it gets better,' she said in a video for the Australian Academy of Science on Tuesday.

'Get into a mental space where you can actually accept that you have to change the way that you live because this epidemic will be taking off in the next few weeks.

'There's going to be more transmissions around in a very short time period and everything that you can do to reduce your contact with other people [will help].' 

Professor Macintyre also warned a potential 'second wave' could bring a swarm of new infections.

'There are different modelling projections looking at when the epidemic might peak which means there'll be several months of a tail as well,' she said.

'And there's always a possibility of a second wave, especially if only a fraction of the population gets infected in the first wave which is the case in China – less than 1 per cent of the whole population got infected, so there is potentially the second wave there.' 

A council ranger orders sunbathers at McKenzies Bay in Sydney to go home on Tuesday, after the government brought in a crackdown on social-distancing - likely to last for months

Gymgoers at the outdoor gym at Cronulla Beach are issued a ticket for training outdoors on Tuesday (pictured), which is against social distancing guidelines

Stage 2 began just three days later on March 26 when nail salons and other businesses with close contact were shut and gatherings slashed to 10 people.

In further measures, from Sunday all overseas arrivals are now forcibly quarantined in hotels for 14 days, instead of being trusted to self-isolate themselves.

Gatherings are now limited to just two people in most states, with all but essential travel away from the home banned.

People are allowed to leave the house to exercise, buy food, attend medical appointments, go to pharmacies and attend essential workplaces.

Expert modelling suggests those measures in NSW could shift the peak period of infection to early October, with intensive care units at their busiest in mid-November.

But even if restrictions on movement reduce the reproduction rate to 1.6 - meaning each individual with the disease infects 1.6 others - the state's ICU capacity could still be overwhelmed, an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday found.

'Under the scenario of increased social isolation, the peak infection will shift to early October and peak ICU utilisation will shift to mid-November and would be around one-third the size of the business-as-usual peak,' the authors wrote.

At that point, some five per cent of the population could be symptomatic, with more than 14,000 people in hospital across NSW and 5100 patients in intensive care.

'This represents 585 per cent of the state's baseline ICU capacity prior to the epidemic,' write the article's authors from the University of Sydney, Monash University and James Cook University.

Healthcare worker Vanessa Chang poses for a photo in the coronavirus screening clinic at Cabrini private hospital in Melbourne (pictured) as it prepares for more patients

Hazard tape is seen at a playground in Melbourne on Tuesday (pictured) after public gatherings were limited to just two people

The infectious diseases modellers note that prior to the current coronavirus epidemic there were 874 intensive care beds in NSW.

They argue that even with a doubling of existing services 'the available supply is estimated to be substantially less than the peak requirement'.

Hospitals and ICU facilities 'are likely to be overwhelmed unless transmission can be reduced significantly', the authors suggest.

Without social distancing measures, peak transmission would be much earlier, in late-June, with peak hospitalisation in early July.

It's estimated 16 per cent of the population could be symptomatic with more than 35,000 people hospitalised and close to 11,800 UCI beds needed. 

WILL WINTER MAKE IT HARDER TO BATTLE COVID-19? 

While not yet upon us, the Australian winter might make fighting COVID-19 harder again, says one of country's leading infectious disease experts.

Although flu's peak time is June to August, it's potentially worrying that we've already seen widespread coronavirus infection while it's still warm, according to Adelaide University professor Michael Beard.

'So what's going to happen in winter? It could be worse,' he told AAP.

'We just don't know, but there are some concerns.'

One is that the saliva and mucus droplets we cough up and sneeze out are smaller in winter, which means they more deeply penetrate the lungs of anyone who breath them in. It's not good news if they're infected.

Face masks have become a regular sight in Australia, with people wearing them to protect from the virus (pictured, a woman in Sydney on March 17)

Mucus is 98 per cent water so if it's instead allowed to dry out, it can produce that crusty kind of nasal obstruction we're all occasionally familiar with, which also allows pathogens to get trapped in our airways.

One place that's most likely to happen is inside during a winter's day with heaters blasting or fires roaring.

Outdoors in the cold, however, the nose and lungs can also have a decreased response to virus infection. So that could be another potential problem.

Prof Beard says perhaps his main concern moving into the Australian winter is 'how this coronavirus is going to interface with influenza virus infection.

'I would urge people to get their flu vaccinations.'

The coronavirus could become harder to battle as winter sets in (pictured, a woman wearing a mask in front of Sydney Opera House on March 13)

Complicating matters, pandemics often don't follow normal seasonal outbreak patterns. The Spanish flu (1918-1920), for example, peaked during summer.

However, researchers at the University of Maryland have found the worst COVID-19 eruptions so far have been clustered in a narrow band across the Northern Hemisphere that has consistently similar weather and takes in China, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, France and the US Pacific Northwest.

'It couldn't have been bad luck that these particular places were hit,' project spokesman Mohammad Sajadi told the Wall Street Journal last week.

'This virus is acting like a seasonal respiratory virus. We could be wrong but with the data we have, we think that is the most likely scenario.'