Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

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Must...Fly! said:
Testing numbers have been on the low side for quite some time,
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Sunday's tend to be lower. But yes they would like say another 10/30K more per day to get tested.

Must...Fly! said:
not sure we will ever see the likes of 100k+ in Victoria unless government puts in requirements for surveillance testing in certain suburbs etc similar to Sydney LGAs of concern
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Yes they do not want to clog up the system with extra surveillance testing that has a very low rate of finding asymptomatic cases and has the negative consequence that it slows down getting back tests results back from people who are much more likely to be positive cases - ie Those who have symptoms, those who have attended an exposure site, or who are close contacts and have been directed to get tested

It is better to find most positive cases quickly (preferably within 24 hours), than also find a few extra cases but delay results of many positive results for days which would with the speed of Delta be likely to have generated more cases in that interim period.



2 nights ago I had my first direct overlap (I have had some near misses) at an Exposure Site since the pandemic started as I was there during the 30 minutes listed for the site. A Tier 2 site.

So my wife and I went and got tested as soon as I was aware of the exposure site. We were tested at 7.30PM. Negative test results back by 4.04 AM the next morning. Positive tests get notified more quickly. So 7.5 hours to get a negative test result back is good.


Much more pleasant when getting tested now

Since my last test, the test process has changed. I was mentally prepared for the unpleasant nature of the test, but it was not at all.

They now only swab lightly in the back of the throat, and then in the nose they now only swab from the however part, rather than the earlier practice of practice inserting it quite deeply, which was very unpleasant and eye-watering!

I asked the nurse and she confirmed that this was how they now do it now. I then also asked my wife as she was tested early in this wave in July and she confirmed that she had the same less intrusive test procedure back then.
 
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kpc said:
This article spells out my concerns about the hospital system and the fact I don't think the NSW government is being honest with the public about relaxing restrictions at 80% vaccination rates: Michael Pascoe: Hard times ahead for NSW hospitals, other states worse
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The article doesn’t talk about relaxing at 80% though? I do agree that the hospitalisations don’t peak until mid October but this has been very clear in daily briefings. What we didn’t know and is relevant to this discussion is how fast the hospitalised drops because we aren’t going to get to 80% vaccinated mid October.

I’d agree we can’t open up if we still at peak hospitalisation point but I think it’s too early to conflate the two and indeed think it’s highly unlikely the two will happen at the same time.

While I remain confident we will hit 80% overseas experience is that there is a clear slowdown well before 80% and in fact 80% while possible is in fact a stretch.
 
[in]
A lot of rhetoric / speculation / crystalballing / hyperbole about Hospital capacity…

Please read the NSW ICU pandemic plan:

Google: “ NSW adult intensive care services pandemic response planning”

Currently,
Other medical specialties asked to help out in Covid wards (wards with patients where the primary disease is Covid related)

So cardiologists, gastroenterologist and other physicians not usually involved with Covid as it is primarily a respiratory illness asked to help out on a Covid ward roster. Respiratory physicians will still oversee medical management. Physicians are Drs with advanced training in medicine and sub specialty medicine - cardiology, gastroenterology etc.

Anaesthetists asked to help in ICU because they are also critical care medicine trained and are experts at intubation (putting breathing tubes into sick patients).

operating theatres will be used as ICU

I suspect the surgeons will be the quietest.

Shortage will be nursing likely the issue. Theatre nurses will be redeployed as Elective surgery has been curtailed except Cat 1 - emergency, and operations what cannot wait longer than 1 month.

Overall the vibe at the coalface is a lot calmer than what the rhetoric and hyperbole suggests. The admissions for influenza are negligible - usually in winter hospitals and ICU are full with ambulance ramping and curtailing of elective surgery anyway. Private hospitals have excess capacity and are being used.

The modelling suggests the peak infections will be 2-3 weeks approx. The peak in hospital admissions likely time shifted by another week???. Modelling only has limited visibility into the future (unlike the crystal ball)

The system will be stretched. But remember that no one will be turned away. And most importantly, no one will be judged based on their vaccination status or ideological beliefs re Covid, vaccinations or anything else.…

And please let’s tone down the rhetoric. A bit of positivity will go a long way. Here is an idea. Volunteer in a hospital….

Additional Issues are :
1) should older Drs and nurses over 60 be exposed to Covid risk even if vaccinated
2) older Drs and nurses who are likely financially independent with no dependants have also expressed the dilemma that younger Drs and nurses have young families and should younger Drs/nurses with dependants be put at the forefront and risk their breadwinner?

[/out]
 
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Has anyone seen a published R eff for Victoria? By my crude calculations it's above 2 and accelerating - but I am certainly not an expert on this so would like to find out what the real number is.
 
burmans said:
While I remain confident we will hit 80% overseas experience is that there is a clear slowdown well before 80% and in fact 80% while possible is in fact a stretch.
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Though the caveat with the UK, Denmark etc is that they have all had a significant proportion of their population who have already had Covid and so for them it really is a combination of the vaccination rate, plus those that have already had Covid. With Australia it is much more just the vaccination rate as we have had so few cases as yet.


ie Denmark is looking good now in terms of adverse health outcomes and hospitalisations, despite a surge of cases (about a thousand per day) starting in July.

Population is about 87% Victoria, and about 70% of NSW. Denmark has a high quality health system.

Deaths are about 3 per day at present and numbers on hospitalisations are shown below. Numbers which are say acceptable for "living with covid" in a case surge situation.

1630894926482.png
It has a population of 5.8 million people. Since the pandemic started 349,000 cases and 2590 deaths.
Now actual infections are much higher than confirmed cases. Maybe say 3 times higher. So say one in six have had Covid.

Australia with 4 times the population had had 63 thousand cases. Say 200 hundred thousand who have had Covid. So only one in 130.


Note:
www.sst.dk

Covid-19 surveillance

Current data on the development of coronavirus in Denmark
www.sst.dk www.sst.dk

1630894261148.png

1/ It is expected that 5,150,000 people are offered vaccination in Denmark in 2021. The proportion of vaccinated persons is calculated in relation to the number of persons who are offered vaccination.


Denmark eased restrictions further on 1st September (when they were at 75% fully vaxxed) and more again since. Though they have already gone to 82% and are aiming for 90% by 1st October..


Back on 1st September:

The country of 5.8 million inhabitants has so far fully vaccinated more than 75% of people aged 12 and over. Vulnerable people can also now get a booster shot.​
​
The government aims for 90% of those over the age of 12 to have received at least one dose by October 1. On Monday, it said 86% had.​
​
Konradsen also stressed that the vaccination rtre needs to be nudged up to 90%, warning "else we'll be hit later in the winter."​
 
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Hope NSW Government/Health are sensible enough to ask for AusMAT now to cover until end November.........with Vic not that far behind - should get in early with the request.
 
lovetravellingoz said:
It has a population of 5.8 million people. Since the pandemic started 349,000 cases and 2590 deaths.
Now actual infections are much higher than confirmed cases. Maybe say 3 times higher. So say one in six have had Covid.
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So the take from that is about a million “cases” and less than 3000 deaths?
 
dairyfloss said:
Here is VIC (1.9), and then NSW (1.12), both updated today:

View attachment 257677

View attachment 257678
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Thanks - I was doing 5 day averages and working out D/D-5 which gave 2.4 (and accelerating) but seems it's D/D-4 which gives 1.9, and a slight decrease from the weekend when it was above 2 both days.

Still quite alarming - but I expect it will fall back to NSW levels pretty quickly.
 
Still quite a difference for pretty similar lockdown conditions. Not seen the geographic spread in Melbourne but as far as Sydney goes its relatively centred on W Sydney. I'm guessing the LGA Reffs would vary quite a bit
 
Reff continues to decline in NSW, the rate of increase in numbers in NSW is clearly slowing, the above would tend to confirm the prediction of this peak cases being in a week (or so).
 
andye said:
Still quite a difference for pretty similar lockdown conditions. Not seen the geographic spread in Melbourne but as far as Sydney goes its relatively centred on W Sydney. I'm guessing the LGA Reffs would vary quite a bit
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Yes they vary quite a bit. The LGAs of concern have a worse Reff:
coughberland - 1.17
Canterbury Bankstown - 1.34
Blacktown - 1.19
Liverpool - 1.40
Fairfield - 1.35
Penrith - 1.18
Parramatta - 1.17
Campbelltown - 1.36
Georges River - 1.82
Bayside - 1.53
Strathfield - 1.43
Burwood - 2.70 (but I think off a low base)

- numbers from Chris Billington.
 
HappyFlyerFamily said:
Maybe one is of 18+ and the other 16+???

Edit: UK gov website (3rd graph) https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations

...seems to say fully vax uptake is 79.6%
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Yeah probably. As I said I'm not fundamentally against the way the UK opened up but also feel we should learn from the mistakes of others. They opened up at about 75% fully vaccinated and the road to 80% has been a hard slog. One of the main reasons in my view was that the imperative to get fully vaccinated disappeared almost overnight and we can learn from this with targeted restrictions particularly of unvaccinated people.
 
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