FOR seven weeks, Australia has averaged just 12 new cases of coronavirus a day, and the majority of these have been returning overseas travellers.

Fewer than 600 of our 7265 cases remain active. With this sustained reduction in infection rates - Australia now sits in 67th place on the Johns Hopkins University global COVID-19 dashboard - pressure is mounting to speed up the removal of the social and economic restrictions that have underpinned the nation's rapid recovery from the peak of cases in late March.

Initially, critics seized on the weekend's Black Lives Matter rallies as evidence of government hypocrisy in allowing the protests to go ahead. But to try to force the issue, Trump-style, would have inevitably resulted in US-style violence.

Now, the rallies are being used as an epidemiological experiment: the argument is that if case numbers have not spiked in a fortnight's time, there will be little practical justification for whatever lockdown provisions remain.

The federal government is also moving to fine-tune its various coronavirus stimulus measures, reviewing their progress leading into the half-way point of the March-to-September packages.

Australia would seem to have this first and hopefully only wave of infection under control. Various other Western nations that fell early to the virus introduced by returning overseas travellers have also had substantial and sustained falls in the rate and number of new cases.

But the accelerating pace of the global Johns Hopkins case curves reveal the wildfire spread of COVID-19 through South and Central America, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases across the Indian subcontinent, and a worsening picture in the Middle East and Africa. Even after 7.1 million cases and more than 406,000 deaths, coronavirus looks destined to create global misery for many months to come.

Talks are under way about resuming flights across the Tasman, but free travel to and from the wider world looks to be some time away. The result may be Australia and New Zealand drawn closer together in necessary - but hopefully temporary - isolation.

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