Australia’s elimination strategy during the first two years of the COVID pandemic was one of the most effective in the world. Through a combination of early border closures, widespread testing and meticulous contact tracing, localised lockdowns and mask mandates, the number of reported cases was kept to around 28,000 in 2020.
This compared with 805,000 in 2020 in the Netherlands, which has a population nine million fewer than Australia.
In 2021, Australia recorded 402,000 cases. The increase was largely due to the Delta outbreak in the second half of the year.
