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‘Make it work on the ground’: Meet Australia’s pandemic whisperer-By Rachel Clun ANU Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge has worked hard behind the scenes on Australia’s COVID-19 response.CREDIT:ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN Source:SMH High-tech hospital wards and advanced medical treatments were not going to save Australia from the ravages of a previously unknown virus, as Associate Professor Kamalini Lokuge well knew. Three basic things would be key: preventing the virus from entering the community, tracing all cases of the disease, and most importantly of all, ensuring the public understood and trusted the government’s health messaging. “In some ways it was a near miss, what happened in Australia,” Professor Lokuge said. “Like almost all developed countries Australia was very confident, given the past track record, that they could manage with technology, with therapeutic intervention: there wasn’t a [widespread] understanding that for this, the only intervention was prevention.”   Kamalini Lokuge is not a household name. ...