The world knew little about the disease and no one had first hand experience dealing with a pandemic of this nature.

Australia was able to flatten the curve and our hospitals were never overwhelmed.

But for doctors, nurses and others on the frontline in Canberra, fear of a second wave has since lingered in the back of their minds.

The risk of complacency is there for all to see.

In Beijing, after weeks without a locally transmitted case, a new cluster has emerged.

And closer to home, Melbourne has seen a significant uptick in cases over the past week.

In early April, things were looking grim across Australia.

There were fears the country was headed on a similar path as much of Europe and America, where widespread community transmission was, and is still, happening.

Vision of packed hospitals and mass graves struck fear into people's hearts.

In Canberra, plans were announced to build a temporary pop-up hospital on a suburban playing field.

Our hospitals were put into emergency mode and all procedures except the most urgent of surgeries were cancelled.

But the tsunami of patients the ACT's hospitals had been planning for never arrived.

The country's strict border controls and social distancing measures had been able to suppress the virus.

The ACT has now gone weeks without detecting a case that was contracted in Canberra.

Canberra Hospital emergency department doctor James Falconer says the system is in a much better position to deal with any outbreaks than a few months ago.

"We started it from knowing pretty much nothing (about the virus)," he says.

"Initially the advice was changing almost on a daily basis.

"Now we're starting to get better quality evidence and starting to get some decent studies coming out.

"Certainly it was all pretty grim there for a while, we really didn't know what we were dealing with."

The nurse-led walk-in centre at Weston Creek was the first public coronavirus testing point in the ACT. It was later joined by the EPIC drive-through and other clinics.

"None of us had ever done this before," Kate Dwyer, a clinical nurse educator at Canberra's walk-in centre clinics, says.

"There was no roadmap, and we had to create that roadmap.

"We were drawing on information that was forever changing."

Early on, nurses faced abuse from patients. Often it was people turned away from being tested because they did not meet the criteria.

"It's never OK to abuse anybody and it's never OK to abuse health staff, but I think the sense of fear was driving them to lash out," Dwyer says.

ACT health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith says the decisions of the ACT government and national cabinet made during that period weighed heavily on her.

"We were taking a range of really strong measures ... and we didn't know whether this was going to work," she says

"And that waiting game was quite an anxious period for all of us.

"It got to a point where there wasn't much more we could do but wait and see whether the measures would work.

"The relief when we realised it had worked was quite palpable.

"And then the next challenge is how do you open up safely and how do we ensure the wider population is taking seriously the risk of resurgence?"

Infectious disease expert, professor Peter Collignon, says it's more likely we'll see a "second bump" rather than a second wave of the virus in Australia.

"I personally think we're not likely to get big outbreaks like they did overseas," he says.

Collignon says the virus was likely circulating in the US for weeks or even months before the outbreak was recognised.

"One of the reasons it got so bad there is it was introduced in winter," he says.

"And I personally think it got introduced for six weeks, if not two months, unrecognised, from at least early January.

"It was only when it started getting into aged care places in the US that they started noticing this was different.

"We are very unlikely to ever have two months of unrecognised spread."

Some have become alarmed at the rise of cases in Melbourne over the last week, with dozens of new cases including some community transmission.

But Collignon says Victoria probably looks worse than what is really happening, due to the international travel component.

ACT chief health officer Dr Kerryn Coleman says the risk of a second wave is always at the forefront of her mind.

"We want everyone to get out in the community and enjoy life, but as you've seen there's been a resurgence of cases in Beijing recently and it can happen really quickly," she says.

As interstate border restrictions ease and travel bubbles are created, the risk of transmission increases.

Coleman says new cases in the ACT are almost inevitable, but the key was to ensure they did not become outbreaks.

A ripple does not have to become a wave.

She says strict quarantine for overseas travellers, high levels of testing and maintaining physical distancing and hygiene were the main ways to achieve this.

"We're trying to push the message that it's everyone's responsibility to reduce the risk of transmission to and from themselves," she says.

"The risk of a case turning into an outbreak and community transmission is really dependent on individuals doing what they can do."

Emergency department nurse Angela Abigail says the pandemic has brought together all parts of Canberra's health services.

She says there was some anxiety among staff as everyone waited for a sudden influx of patients.

When that never happened, and people stayed away from the hospitals, it meant they were all able to focus on training and upskilling.

It also meant they could manage supply chains to ensure the hospital didn't run out of things like PPE.

"That anxiety of just sitting and waiting for it to come left people a little bit tired," she says.

Abigail says while staff have been able to relax a little bit, they have not let their guard down. A fresh outbreak is always on their minds.

"You can't help but think about what we've seen overseas," she says.

"That sits in the back of your mind. This could get worse again soon."

She says the fact there had been no transmission in health facilities of the virus in the ACT made everyone confident the processes in place were strong.

Falconer says things turned out better than anyone working in the hospital early on in the pandemic could have hoped.

Presentations to the emergency department dropped dramatically at the peak of coronavirus cases in the ACT.

And while people have begun to return, Falconer says clinicians were able to use the time with fewer patients to put in place better systems to best manage any potential outbreak.

Like others working in healthcare, his mind often turns to the possibility of a resurgence in the virus, as pandemic fatigue sets it.

"We worry about a second wave as people become a little blase," he says.

Collignon says it's unrealistic to expect Australia can eliminate the virus, and it's dangerous to think we have or will.

Part of the reason for that is so many people in their 20s and 30s who contract the virus have mild or no symptoms.

"You can be still circulating [the virus] at low levels and you'll be hard-pressed to pick it up," Collignon says.

"I hope I'm wrong and I guess in three months' time if we don't have anymore cases that will be fine."

If people believe the virus has been eliminated it could lead to complacency.

"If you aren't taking precautions all the time that decrease the risk of droplets being spread ... then this can come back fairly quickly and cause major problems fairly quickly," Collignon says.

"We need to assume that we've suppressed this virus to very low levels of community transmission but don't assume it's nowhere."

That means some restrictions to enforce distancing will be a way of life until a safe and effective vaccine is developed and distributed world-wide.

And overseas travel is definitely off the cards until then.

Collignon says venues like nightclubs, where physical distancing generally does not occur, should remain closed for at least the next three months.

"We're going to have to put things in place that let us function but decrease the risk markedly that we'll have widespread transmission of the virus," he says.

"We do not want to end up like the US or most of Europe.

"My view is even if you're having people over for a meal you're better off if you can do it outside for lunch in the sun ... keep the number of people down and keep your distance when you're talking."

Dwyer says work at the walk-in centres is yet to fully return to normal.

The Weston Creek clinic is still the main testing centre and they're doing more tests than ever.

"I don't think we ever let go of business as usual, we've just been trying to do it in conjunction with COVID," she says.

"We are vulnerable if we become complacent."

Canberra took its next great step in learning to live with the virus on Friday, when gathering sizes increased to 100.

But people and businesses will still need to make sure there is adequate social distancing between groups of people.

Stephen-Smith says the response to the pandemic was not a precise science, and there was always the risk of either overreacting or underreacting.

But she's confident the ACT has the balance right.

"The pandemic isn't over, we're going to need to be extra vigilant throughout the whole of winter and beyond, until we get a vaccine," Stephen-Smith says.

"We know that once it gets hold, once those trains of transmission start the numbers can increase very, very quickly."