And our skill at social distancing has received the imprimatur of none other than the ABC's high priest of coronavirus advice, Dr Norman Swan.

The physician and broadcaster during his daily podcast on the virus, Coronacast, this week mentioned how well Canberrans were doing at social distancing, even with zero active COVID-19 cases in the territory for six weeks and counting.

Dr Swan was talking about the implications for other countries as he considered the possibility the latest coronavirus outbreak in New Zealand had come in via frozen food in cold storage, although the country itself has reportedly ruled out that theory.

"There are some implications for the rest of the world and particularly Australia," Dr Swan began.

"One, you can't just talk about eradication of the virus, it's just impossible to eradicate this virus. What you can talk about is elimination of spread. While you might say you've eliminated the spread, you've still got to have social isolation and taking a lot of care, you cannot return entirely to normal. I think New Zealand thought they could. We've talked about in Coronacast that you could, but it's just too risky.

"I was actually in the ACT over the weekend for the Canberra Writers Festival and it's interesting the ACT, my anecdotal impression was, even though they've had no spread, Canberrans are actually maintaining their social distance and being incredibly careful, more careful than I've noticed in NSW, in particular, which is where I'm based."

Dr Swan was a guest at the recent Canberra Writers Festival to moderate a discussion called Why does it take a catastrophe? mulling over why it takes a disaster, either political or environmental, to awaken the population to what is apparently happening around them.

He spoke to us on Thursday, emphasising his observations were anecdotal but what he did see in Canberra was stark, especially from staff in local restaurants and cafes, including The Ottoman in Barton and the Mocan and Green Grout cafe in New Acton, latter's staff especially vigilant. "They were fierce," he said, with a laugh.

"I was just impressed at how when you went into a restaurant, even a popular one, they were just being careful and there just seems to be a lot of consciousness of it," he said.

"We went for coffee a couple of times in the morning and they were really quite strict about getting in for a coffee, more strict than you actually experience in Sydney.

"I didn't go to Woollies or Coles or anything like that so I didn't see it there. My main point was, I was very quickly conscious that it was a different environment to Sydney, which Canberra is anyway.

"And I live in the eastern suburbs [of Sydney] in a hotspot and you see more people wearing masks there, but you don't see them being as careful about social distancing. It just struck me, quite clearly, you arrive in a different city and people, not on lockdown, are behaving very differently. It's probably one of the recipes for success [in the ACT]."

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But Dr Swan wasn't quite on board with a Canberra travel bubble, even though "you're a pretty safe group of people", the downfall being the back and forth over the "porous" ACT-NSW border.

"If you could actually guarantee you were from the ACT and that's where you were without too much travelling..but that's the problem, how much you've gone into NSW recently, because you haven't been quarantined.

"I mean, it will be inevitable that the ACT will get a case or two but it's impressive so far."

And we couldn't not ask how he felt about his journalist son Jonathan's headline-grabbing interview with President Donald Trump.

"The whole family is very proud of him. He did very well," Dr Swan said.