Just when we thought it might be a little safer to go out, we are warned that there may be more plague to come.
The country's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly, said that it's far too early to rule out a "second wave" of the virus.
We've weathered the first wave really well compared with other countries - but that success may now make us more vulnerable to further doses of the coronavirus and COVID-19, the illness it causes.
If more people contract the illness, more people will have immunity.
And if fewer people contract it, fewer people will be immune to it.
There will not be what's called "herd immunity".
As Professor Kelly put it: "We are nowhere near that concept of herd immunity."
But why worry if the figures remain low?
The coronavirus is still out there, maybe not immediately near you, but only a flight away from China or Europe or the United States where outbreaks remain far from under control.
And we don't really know if we have it under control in our own communities - that's why the federal government is so keen to expand testing.
The Australian National University infectious diseases expert, Professor Peter Collignon, said it was almost certain that the virus was still present but undetected.
Some people who contract coronavirus only experience such mild symptoms that they may not even feel ill - but they can still infect others.
Are there lessons from elsewhere?
Singapore and Thailand have seen a second wave - a new upsurge, with a second spike in new cases.
And some parts of Germany started easing restrictions as the daily number of new victims fell - but there was then an ominous increase in other figures.
The key concept is the "reproduction rate". It's the number of people which an infected person then infects. It's not a fixed number - it varies between societies.
And it varies between viruses.
For flu, for example, one victim is thought to infect just over one other victim in normal circumstance. For coronavirus, the figure is more than two - and that is very infectious.
This means that unchecked, coronavirus would spread very rapidly through the population.
If each infected person infects more than one person, illness spreads rapidly. If it were less than one, the spread contracts.
When Germany started relaxing the rules, the rate rose so the epidemic looked like returning.
The German leader, Angela Merkel - a scientist - fears that the earlier good work in closing down German society will be undone.
So should we just keep everything closed?
It is obvious that there is an economic cost to closing the economy.
And an economic cost also has a health cost down the track. An economy in recession delivers less tax to fund health care.
Policy-makers, therefore, try to balance the damage to the economy with the need to control the epidemic.
Each Australian state is playing it differently. Tasmania, for example, is relaxing very little - but it was particularly hard hit.
The task is to relax but be prepared to reimpose the constraints. At the same time, the federal government wants a big expansion in testing to ascertain just how much danger is out there.
So we have achieved nothing if we are just worried about a 'second wave'?
Not so. One of the constraints policy-makers were worried about was the sheer ability of the health system to cope with a pandemic.
Remember those terrible images from Italy where hospitals were simply overwhelmed with patients suffering from the disease.
In Australia, our social-distancing and, perhaps, our distance from the big global sources of the disease insulated us from the worst effects. Emergency hospitals were created but remained unused.
A second wave would produce the same risks as the first wave.
So what is the way out?
Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, gave the broad view: "The government's national aim is simple, suppress the virus, increase testing and tracing, and slowly ease the restrictions."
We have suppressed the virus - suppressed but not eliminated it. But a second wave would undo that.
As more testing occurs, it ought to be easier to control further outbreaks. The government is very keen on its app so that the moment someone is detected as infected, those with whom they have come into contact can be identified and isolated.
The next stage is likely to be a gradual and carefully calculated opening up of society, always ready to put the clamps back on if the numbers start rising and a second wave looms.
This opening up is unlikely to include allowing meetings of people, including at church, concerts, pubs or restaurants.
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What about a vaccine?
Don't hold your breath.
There are hopeful signs from tests in Oxford in Britain where a vaccine is being tested on human beings.
But even if all goes well, nobody expects a vaccine to be available before the end of the year.
Vaccines have to be tested for effectiveness but also for safety to make sure the vaccine which kills the virus doesn't cause other harms. Thalidomide remains the warning against any short-cut.
And vaccines often take years to develop. One study puts the average period as 10.7 years.
Nobody thinks that the coronavirus vaccine will take that long. The world's resources, from Bill Gates' money to tax-payers' money to the best minds on the planet, are being thrown at this problem, but the best estimate is a year to 18 months.
And there is the manufacture, not just of the vaccine but of the means of delivering it into the human body.
As the New Scientist magazine concluded bleakly: "It could be years before we have a vaccine.
"Until then, we will need to deal with multiple waves of infection with measures such as extensive testing, contact tracing and quarantining."
- For information on COVID-19, please go to the federal Health Department's website.
- You can also call the Coronavirus Health Information Line on 1800 020 080
- If you have serious symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, call Triple Zero (000)
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