Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

[jb747]

That doses administered figure is a bit sad. At that rate, it will take about 400 days just to get the first dose out to Victoria…

I know it was the weekend, but….

 

[jb747]

Again, expecting perfect behaviour from humans leads to disappointing outcomes.

And I expect that they will keep doing it, given that such behaviour doesn’t seem to bring any real personal repercussions.

 

[bcworld]

That doses administered figure is a bit sad. At that rate, it will take about 400 days just to get the first dose out to Victoria…

I know it was the weekend, but….

FYI...the number that Vic Gov quotes on their stats is ONLY the vaccines administered at vaccine hubs run by the state government. It doesn't include vaccinations done at GPs (probably zero on a Sunday anyway) or by the Commonwealth gov. Victoria's total including those other channels is over 3 million.

 

[oznflfan]

NSW could be in lockdown until Mid September...

NSW could be in Lockdown until 2022 when we hit Phase 2 of Scomo's plan

 

[Must...Fly!]

FYI...the number that Vic Gov quotes on their stats is ONLY the vaccines administered at vaccine hubs run by the state government. It doesn't include vaccinations done at GPs (probably zero on a Sunday anyway) or by the Commonwealth gov. Victoria's total including those other channels is over 3 million.

View attachment 254011

The number in the Twitter posts is becoming more and more inaccurate by the day and therefore the status of the rollout is becoming increasingly misunderstood here in VIC. The reporting style should change.

 

[RAM]

Using covidlive information, your claim of 13 out of 19 is not linked is not fully verified.

At a top level, the NSW Contact tracing team has not found the source for 4 of the last 5 outbreaks. Think about that. 80% failure rate.

When there was just one case to be contact traced - the entire 'Gold Standard' Contact tracing team failed to find the one person that started this, or even one person who passed it to the 1st detected case - there could have been multiple low virus shedding links prior to the first detected case. They could always have been fully vaccinated & so were totally asymptomatic.

Who knows as since mid-December not one source has been located.

From Covidlive.

Unknown (mystery) cases no longer under investigation as at 1 December (so pre-outbreak) = 433
Unknown " as at 1 March = 446

New unknown/mystery cases never linked arising from the four separate leaks from NSW Quarantine = 446 - 433 = 13 cases.

If you look at the dates the number of 'under investigation' mystery cases decreased & 'no longer under investigation' increased then the changes mirror each other.

Looking at the new daily cases when announced. Most days there were some who were only discovered as +ve approaching the cutoff of 8pm - so no interviews were able to be conducted prior to the 8pm cutoff. So a/some cases added to 'under investigation' on Day T but were linked on Day T+1.

Whilst technically a mystery case, as they were due to the time cutoffs, for judging the performance of the contact tracers it is in a statistical sense just noise.

You can do a rough & ready adjustment for this by taking a short period moving avg, or using a trend adjustment.

To be conservative - I did not adjust the peak figure of 19 down by MA or trend adjustment.

If I did then the performance of NSW Contact tracing would look much worse.

The number of actively investigated mystery cases remained at 11 cases for 5 days, dropped 1 to 10 for a day and then was at 12 for 4 days, then went 13, 19, 13 before gradually declining as the cases were moved to 'no longer under investigation unlinked cases'.

Prior to this 2 cases had already been given up on.

Given the number of cases jumped 6 one day and went down 6 the next may just have been 6 cases that were processed close to the 8pm cutoff. Who knows.

If I had adjusted by MA or trend then NSW's tracing team failed to find 13 out of 13 mystery cases, or 100% failure rate.

Whether 70% or 100% failure rate - the NSW Govt did not have any basis to believe that contact tracing would be able to contain a leak from NSW Hotel Quarantine by a variant known to be many times more contagious.

After all the evidence from India was widely discussed in April - two months earlier.

Unfortunately, that the May (never linked to anyone) leak with the Eastern Suburbs fund manager who only infected his wife apparently led Gladys & Brad to either believe their own PR or simply feel they'd painted themselves into a corner in criticising other States locking down.

The June 6th tirade by the Premier about other states taking the easy option of locking down but here in NSW we take the harder option & rely on contact tracing - appears to have locked our leaders, who a bit like some Federal Politicians, never make (admit?) mistakes with no other option but to cross their fingers & hope their PR unit was correct & we'd be lucky like in previous outbreaks where, especially in May, the 1 case found did not have a high viral load & was not shedding.

We all know how that bet on 35 Black turned out.

For the State Govt to gamble that they could stop the virus spread in NSW using contact tracing alone had no valid scientific basis given the persistent failure to find the index case and the failure to solve non-family, non-customer, non-worker transmission links.

What they did know conclusively is that the Delta strain is far more transmissable (went from not a % of cases in over 20 countries to the majority strain) & was taking country after country - months before this June leak.

A bit like the initial persistent claims made that you couldn't catch CV on a plane turned out badly. The seeming reticence to consider that people from different households who go for a walk together (exercising) could unknowingly pass CV from one household/workplace to another looks like being another blindspot that costs the NSW community terribly.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

% of cases in Victoria who have had no infectious period (ie not even a day) in the community

13/07 - 0%
14/07 - 0%
15/07 - 0%
16/07 - 0%
17/07 - 5%
18/07 - 0%
19/07 - 8%
20/07 - 69%
21/07 - 73%
22/07 - 92%
23/07 - 79%
24/07 - 83%
25/07 - 100%
26/07 - 100%

 

[MARTINE]

I never thought anything about that disgusting protest on Saturday would bring ’smile’ to my face but somewhere this morning I read about an Anti-5G protester gloating about using Facebook or similar to organise his group for the protest - and livestream … and they were not being ironic…freeDumb indeed..

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Based on your description those last two should read 100%.

Ooops.

Perhaps the more important stat is that I think that there has not be a transmission in the wild for about a week (Hard to be precise as it is not always stated where and when people got infected, and people do turn positive while isolating).

Note also that some people are testing positive at Day 13/14 and so they actual infection date was some time prior if they are nota household contact.

 

[sjk]

% of cases in Victoria who have had no infectious period (ie not even a day) in the community

13/07 - 0%
14/07 - 0%
15/07 - 0%
16/07 - 0%
17/07 - 5%
18/07 - 0%
19/07 - 8%
20/07 - 69%
21/07 - 73%
22/07 - 92%
23/07 - 79%
24/07 - 83%
25/07 - 100%
26/07 - 100%

Which is awesome as long as they’re detecting *all* cases, and not just the easy ones.

 

[hydrabyss]

Looks like a household contact of a case on the Central Coast has been out and about and has since tested positive. Not sure how that happened, shouldn't they have been isolating?

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=4835681133126022&id=122565751104274

I new it was only a matter of time to reach my area and most people here behave like there is no lockdown. Its also only a 10 minute drive to where there is no lockdown.

 

[bcworld]

Which is awesome as long as they’re detecting *all* cases, and not just the easy ones.

I do think 25k tests is somewhat low given the situation.

 

[sjk]

At a top level, the NSW Contact tracing team has not found the source for 4 of the last 5 outbreaks. Think about that. 80% failure rate.

When there was just one case to be contact traced - the entire 'Gold Standard' Contact tracing team failed to find the one person that started this, or even one person who passed it to the 1st detected case - there could have been multiple low virus shedding links prior to the first detected case. They could always have been fully vaccinated & so were totally asymptomatic.

Who knows as since mid-December not one source has been located.

From Covidlive.

Unknown (mystery) cases no longer under investigation as at 1 December (so pre-outbreak) = 433
Unknown " as at 1 March = 446

New unknown/mystery cases never linked arising from the four separate leaks from NSW Quarantine = 446 - 433 = 13 cases.

If you look at the dates the number of 'under investigation' mystery cases decreased & 'no longer under investigation' increased then the changes mirror each other.

Looking at the new daily cases when announced. Most days there were some who were only discovered as +ve approaching the cutoff of 8pm - so no interviews were able to be conducted prior to the 8pm cutoff. So a/some cases added to 'under investigation' on Day T but were linked on Day T+1.

Whilst technically a mystery case, as they were due to the time cutoffs, for judging the performance of the contact tracers it is in a statistical sense just noise.

You can do a rough & ready adjustment for this by taking a short period moving avg, or using a trend adjustment.

To be conservative - I did not adjust the peak figure of 19 down by MA or trend adjustment.

If I did then the performance of NSW Contact tracing would look much worse.

The number of actively investigated mystery cases remained at 11 cases for 5 days, dropped 1 to 10 for a day and then was at 12 for 4 days, then went 13, 19, 13 before gradually declining as the cases were moved to 'no longer under investigation unlinked cases'.

Prior to this 2 cases had already been given up on.

Given the number of cases jumped 6 one day and went down 6 the next may just have been 6 cases that were processed close to the 8pm cutoff. Who knows.

If I had adjusted by MA or trend then NSW's tracing team failed to find 13 out of 13 mystery cases, or 100% failure rate.

Whether 70% or 100% failure rate - the NSW Govt did not have any basis to believe that contact tracing would be able to contain a leak from NSW Hotel Quarantine by a variant known to be many times more contagious.

After all the evidence from India was widely discussed in April - two months earlier.

Unfortunately, that the May (never linked to anyone) leak with the Eastern Suburbs fund manager who only infected his wife apparently led Gladys & Brad to either believe their own PR or simply feel they'd painted themselves into a corner in criticising other States locking down.

The June 6th tirade by the Premier about other states taking the easy option of locking down but here in NSW we take the harder option & rely on contact tracing - appears to have locked our leaders, who a bit like some Federal Politicians, never make (admit?) mistakes with no other option but to corss their fingers & hope their PR unit was correct & we'd be lucky like in previous outbreaks where, especially in May, the 1 case found did not have a high viral load & was not shedding.

We all know how that bet on 35 Black turned out.

For the State Govt to gamble that they could stop the virus spread in NSW using contact tracing alone had no valid scientific basis given the persistent failure to find the index case and the failure to solve non-family, non-customer, non-worker transmission links.

What they did know conclusively is that the Delta strain is far more transmissable (went from not a % of cases in over 20 countries to the majority strain) & was taking country after country - months before this June leak.

A bit like the initial persistent claims made that you couldn't catch CV on a plane turned out badly. The seeming reticence to consider that people from different households who go for a walk together (exercising) could unknowingly pass CV from one household/workplace to another looks like being another blindspot that costs the NSW community terribly.

 

[dairyfloss]

Wondering if anyone knows the answer to this. Yesterday, a school in Sydney's North - Lane Cove West Public School - was highlighted after a student who had been attending tested positive. It's not known yet where that infection came from, but possibly their parents are in healthcare or another essential, higher risk job type.

Thankfully there are very few children attending under the current restrictions, and even less so in this part of Sydney (around 5% at this school), but I'm surprised the site didn't get added to NSW venues of concern, etc. after it was announced that it was closed for deep cleaning.

Would the reason they don't do this be as the school environment is quite controlled, and they already know who all the possible close and casual contacts might be, or is it a delay to listing (which is concerning if that occurs often), or is it something else? Just curious...

Cheers,
Matt.

 

[bcworld]

Thankfully there are very few children attending under the current restrictions, and even less so in this part of Sydney (around 5% at this school), but I'm surprised the site didn't get added to NSW venues of concern, etc. after it was announced that it was closed for deep cleaning.

Would the reason they don't do this be as the school environment is quite controlled, and they already know who all the possible close and casual contacts might be

I would imagine that is exactly the reason.

There are definitely delays though. You'll regularly see people on social media saying that their local supermarket was closed e.g. 2 days ago and still has not appeared as an exposure site. I can't think of a reason for that delay though...you would think it would be listed immediately even if the team was way behind on contacting people from the site.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Which is awesome as long as they’re detecting *all* cases, and not just the easy ones.

Which one cannot be precise on.

However:

• testing rates for walk ins (symptomatic) has been very good
• isolating and testing of all contacts within two rings of any case has been swift. Though the large public sites of MCG and AAMI will have had some delay, but they were both on 10th and 13th
• note that any close contacts are given rapid tests (plus the more accurate test as well) to try and speed things up given how quick Delta Generations can be

Note that most in the wild transmissions had already occurred before the first case returned their positive test.

 

[dairyfloss]

I would imagine that is exactly the reason.

There are definitely delays though. You'll regularly see people on social media saying that their local supermarket was closed e.g. 2 days ago and still has not appeared as an exposure site. I can't think of a reason for that delay though...you would think it would be listed immediately even if the team was way behind on contacting people from the site.

Yeah, that was my thinking - better to list everything you know of as soon as it becomes apparent, even if you list all as casual contacts to start with and that gets them out and getting tested. If you later assess that close contacts are likely, then you go back to those who are (and who hopefully have already had that first test) and tell them they need to sit out the isolation period from the date of exposure, as well

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

Wondering if anyone knows the answer to this. Yesterday, a school in Sydney's North - Lane Cove West Public School - was highlighted after a student who had been attending tested positive. It's not known yet where that infection came from, but possibly their parents are in healthcare or another essential, higher risk job type.

Thankfully there are very few children attending under the current restrictions, and even less so in this part of Sydney (around 5% at this school), but I'm surprised the site didn't get added to NSW venues of concern, etc. after it was announced that it was closed for deep cleaning.

Would the reason they don't do this be as the school environment is quite controlled, and they already know who all the possible close and casual contacts might be, or is it a delay to listing (which is concerning if that occurs often), or is it something else? Just curious...

Cheers,
Matt.

That would be my guess - school are essentially closed to students except children of essential/critical workers. There would only be a handful of students (and probably a small rotation of teachers) and those students are socially distanced (but probably no masks unfortunately).

My guess is that's why we don't hear a lot about which critical worksites which don't have public access (like logistics, not meaning supermarkets) are exposed.

PS I have had friends who were at a public site got the QR SMS saying they were a contact and to get a test immediately and isolate until negative, but that site never made it to the public exposure list.

 

[RAM]

These protesters could have just started a super spreader event!!!!

But we won't know for 4 or 5 days

The odds may just be in our favour. I really hope the media were as inaccurate as they often are with crowd sizes, and may have over-estimated the numbers

Approx avg of last 5 days = 130 cases. Given different days to symptoms, if any, then I'll use 5 days as the potential number of cases walking around in the crowd.

650 cases tested positive out of 5,000,000 in Sydney = 0.013% of population

I've seen figures of the Sydney crowd size ranging from 5,000 to as high as 15,000.

What number of people at the protest would be expected to be carrying CV?:

• if 5,000 then 0.65 people, ok 1 person
  
• if 7,500 then 0.98, so 1 person
  
• if 10,000 then 1.3, so 1 person
  
• if 12,500 then 1.6, so 2 people
  
• if 15,000 then 2.0, so 2 people

Using the words spoken by that great philosopher, Dirty Harry, "So do ya feel lucky?"

Given the way Delta is behaving this time, and never being a roulette player, not particularly. I would like to be very wrong though.

What is the chance of it being passed on and to how many people? To give you an idea of what are in various models then a rigorous model would adjust the number up by:

• chance that person is carrying a high enough viral load, 50%
• triple or quadruple the risk factor due to many people shouting.
• nearly no masks being warn (ironic given normally the more violent ones are fully masked), increase by factor of 5
• no social distancing, increase by factor of 4
• impact of vaccinations, decrease factor by 15% (so multiply x 0.85)

That would make using the crowd of 5,000 likely cv+ people, 0.65 * 3.5 * 5 * 4 * 0.5 * 0.85 = 20 , and crowd of 15,000 = 60

With Melbourne the figures would look exponentially better due to the relatively fractional positive testing rate

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

Which one cannot be precise on.

However:

• testing rates for walk ins (symptomatic) has been very good
• isolating and testing of all contacts within two rings of any case has been swift. Though the large public sites of MCG and AAMI will have had some delay, but they were both on 10th and 13th
• note that any close contacts are given rapid tests (plus the more accurate test as well) to try and speed things up given how quick Delta Generations can be

Note that most in the wild transmissions had already occurred before the first case returned their positive test.

That's the first mention I have heard about a rapid test being deployed by an Australian public health response