This uncertainty delayed the confirmation of an outbreak from Victorian health authorities, which allowed the infection to spread to New South Wales and South Australia by the end of January 1919. The first case of pneumonic influenza appeared in Melbourne, on 9 or 10 January 1919.Įarly cases were so mild, however, that there was initially confusion about whether the virus was the Spanish flu, or simply a continuation of the seasonal flu virus from the previous winter. Maritime quarantine contained the spread of the virus until its virulence lessened, and restricted its eventual introduction into Australia to a single entry point.
The states would arrange emergency hospitals, vaccination depots, ambulance services, medical staff and public awareness measures.Īn electron micrograph showing recreated 1918 influenza virions The conference agreed to the federal government taking responsibility for proclaiming which states were infected along with organising maritime and land quarantine. It held a national influenza planning conference in Melbourne on 26–27 November 1918, at which state health ministers, the directors-general of their health departments and British Medical Association representatives met with Commonwealth personnel. The federal government’s second line of defence was to establish a consistent response in handling and containing any pneumonic influenza outbreaks that might occur in Australia. Of the 81,510 people who were checked, 1102 were infected. Over the next six months the service intercepted 323 vessels, 174 of which carried the infection. The first infected ship to enter Australian waters was the Mataram, from Singapore, which arrived in Darwin on 18 October 1918. The Australian Quarantine Service monitored the spread of the pandemic and implemented maritime quarantine on 17 October 1918 after learning of outbreaks in New Zealand and South Africa. The first line of defence was to try to prevent the virus reaching the Australian mainland. Because of its remoteness from Europe, Australia had months to make necessary preparations. The virus spread rapidly around the world as soldiers returned from active service at the end of the war. In Australia, the virus became known as ‘pneumonic influenza’. Unusually, the Spanish flu affected healthy young adults much more than its usual targets: children, the elderly or those with weakened immune systems. This pandemic started in 1918, the last year of the First World War, and passed through soldiers in Western Europe in successively more virulent waves.
The 1918–19 influenza pandemic is often called the ‘Spanish flu’, not because it originated in Spain, but due to it first being widely reported there. Book cover for Spanish Influenza: All About It by Professor Wade Oliver
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