CANBERRA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The growth rate of Australia's coronavirus cases has fallen below 2 percent.
According to the Department of Health there had been 5,744 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia as of Monday morning.
It represents an increase of only 109 cases, or 1.9 percent, from Sunday morning.
Authorities in Victoria and Western Australia (WA) on Monday confirmed another three deaths, bringing the national toll to 40. More than 90 patients are in intensive care units and 35 are on ventilators.
Ten of those deaths have been in Victoria and 18 in New South Wales (NSW), which now has 2,637 cases.
Paul Kelly, Australia's deputy chief medical officer, on Monday said that Australia seemed to have "successfully" flattened the curve but could still see a peak in deaths in the next few days.
"Our low mortality rate and our low percentage positive in our testing shows me that we are actually finding people early in this disease, isolating them and breaking those chains of transmission that spread through the whole population. So these are very encouraging signs indeed," he said.
"We seem to have successfully flattened the curve at the moment, so whether we indeed will get a peak is hard to know.
"In terms of deaths, yes, there is a delay between cases and deaths. Unfortunately, people tend to get sicker in their second week, the ones that had a very severe disease. So there is a very small delay related to that."
