Today’s  Karl Stefanovic has warned that Australia should not follow the steps that other countries, such as Europe, have taken after an intense debate with colleague Allison Langdon.

The co-hosts vehemently disagreed during a discussion about whether Australia should begin easing COVID-19 restrictions as the nation is flattening the curve.

Langdon argued that Australia should slowly follow suit after an interview with father-of-two Paul Johnson who is living in Denmark and explained that things are beginning to return to normal. This is just after a week-long decline in new cases and deaths.

Latest figures have showed that for the first time, there are more people who have recovered from the illness that there were people who have had it.

Since the beginning of the outbreak from January 25, 6,415 Aussies have been diagnosed with the disease and more than half have recovered with 62 deaths recorded.

The rate of infections has also dropped to its lowest in Europe and several nations, including Spain and Italy – two of the hardest hit – are now reopening for business.

Langdon argued Australia should slowly follow the suit of other countries, but Stefanovic quickly hit back and said Australians must be more cautious to avoid a second outbreak of infections.

“I don’t think Australia needs to be taking any lead out of Europe,’ he said, before adding he thinks ‘our medical authorities are right on top of it.”

“We have to be very much on our toes about clusters coming up as a result and these second wave of infections as we’ve seen in Tasmania, when you have clusters fire up,” he said.

Langdon quickly disagreed, saying that not “every European country is the same”.

“Countries like Denmark, they got on top of this really quickly and locked down,” she said.

“They haven’t had the same outbreaks as other places.”

Book stores and children’s clothes stores reopening yesterday but social distancing rules, bans on non-essential travel and the closure of non-essential industries have still remained in place in Italy.

Johnson said that he wasn’t concerned about a second wave of infections.

“We’re feeling fairly cautious but optimistic as well… It’s not as if there are new cases coming into the country,” he said.

“From what we can ascertain from authorities, we’ve got no major risk.”

Other European countries, such as Austria and the Czech Republic had begun to loosen their lockdowns as the countries move into warmer weather of spring.

Stefanovic said that a single week of positive result shouldn’t warrant the reopening of daycare centres and schools.

“Based on the world example, there is some concern if you open it up too early… A week is not a long time,” he said.      

“It’s really interesting that some countries will be doing that and opening up schools on a day when we’re fiercely debating that.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged parents to send their children to school following the Easter Break, despite some state premiers giving opposite advice by telling families to keep kids home if possible.

“We will lose many things in the course of fighting this virus,” he said.

“One thing that I know teachers are united on, with their parents, is we do not want one of those things to be the loss of a child’s education, giving up a whole year of their learning.”

Langdon said the details of exactly how Denmark are planning to return to normal is “something we could potentially look at”, but Stefanovic said it’s too early to even consider something like that.

“I’m just saying… We should be erring on the side of medical professionals,” he said, before Langdon could interject.

“You can say. And I can disagree,” she said.