But only a couple of cameras were allowed.

Outside the Horizon Church in Sutherland Shire, the rest of the reporters travelling on the Liberal election trail watched as youth leaders decorated the nearby park and hid eggs for the annual hunt after the service.

Later in the day, Morrison, his security team and the media pack pushed their way through crowds in the produce pavilion at the Sydney Easter Show, shaking hands, cheering on jumping dogs, and taking his daughters on a Sideshow Alley ride.

It must seem like a lifetime ago.

This year, the show has been cancelled. The ride operators are despairing over their expensive new equipment and the crowds that aren't allowed to gather to try it out.

Horizon's senior pastor Brad Bonhomme will still lead the Resurrection Sunday service but it will be streamed online.

Morrison has moved his family down to Canberra while he bases himself in the capital to guide the nation's response to the coronavirus crisis.

His daughters and wife Jenny have decorated the ageing prime ministerial residence for the holiday - an activity he advised the nation's parents coping without schools might be good to occupy their children for an hour or so.

Australians have done a good job so far of dramatically changing their daily lives and heeding the message to stay at home, stop the spread and save lives.

But leaders and medical officials are desperately worried the habits of the Easter holiday will tempt people to break out of their self-imposed isolation and lead to a rise in new coronavirus cases.

"We are only days away from Easter, the time that should give us great hope," Morrison said this week.

"The message is clear though. Stay home. Don't travel. Don't go away. We can't let up now."

Health Minister Greg Hunt faced a string of questions on morning television about what people could do.

Visit family and friends? No. Head to the holiday home to see grandma and grandpa? No. Backyard barbecue with friends? Definitely not.

No community egg hunts, no trips from the city to the beach, no church services, no annual boys' weekends, no folk festivals or surfing competitions.

What might another year bring?

Researchers around the world are working their hardest to find a vaccine for COVID-19.

But chief medical officer Brendan Murphy warns that "beautiful way out" of the crisis is likely a year or 18 months away if it can ever be found.

Leaders are starting to think about when and how the tough restrictions and social distancing rules can be relaxed, conscious of the devastation they are wreaking on livelihoods.

Morrison says the ability of all governments to prop up the economy is finite.

So life will likely have returned to some semblance of normality by the time the Easter Bunny hops around in 2021 - but everything will be different too.

"One day, we will conquer this disease. The pandemic will be a Wikipedia entry with a start date and a finish date," Labor leader Anthony Albanese said.

"But its effects will be with us for a very long time."

He highlighted the aspects of how our society works that the crisis has thrown into the spotlight - the lack of work security, the need for greater self-reliance and support for Australian manufacturing, the great advantages being an island nation affords us.

And that the nation's frontline workers - cleaners, childcare workers, teachers, health workers, nurses - are the poorest paid.

Demographer Lisa Denny says it's too early yet to say how the reaction to the coronavirus might end in long-term changes to the way Australians work.

But she thinks it's likely there will be a move away from employers requiring workers to simply serve time in their offices and at the very least, an awareness of how much the nation relies on casual workers and the gig economy.

"Hopefully it will have the shock that is needed to reset the way our workforce is structured and supported and how people are employed," she told AAP.

Australian Associated Press