Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

[I love to travel]

The trend in daily new cases in Australia is encouraging.
View attachment 212001.

COVID-19 reporting

This page provides update on national COVID-19 spread, vaccination and treatment metrics.

www.health.gov.au

So I am getting confused about why we will need social distancing for so long? If we keep the borders closed and this rate of decline continues, why are we talking about peaks in July?

 

[Pushka]

If anyone is curious about seeing the curve and daily cases for each state and territory you can see them at Charting the coronavirus spread: The latest Australian data on the COVID-19 pandemic

This site also has things like deaths per age band, sex etc.

Thankyou. And this quote backs up what I posted a couple of days ago where I posted I'd read that SA had the highest testing rate per capita in Australia, and up there with the best in the world.

"However, adjusting for population shows SA has the highest rate of testing, at roughly 4 times the rate in Tasmania, which has the nation’s lowest rate of testing."

Just sayin.

 

[andye]

So I am getting confused about why we will need social distancing for so long? If we keep the borders closed and this rate of decline continues, why are we talking about peaks in July?

The daily increase may well be going down just because we are having fewer overseas arrivals. The level of local spread is now the key factor. Given we can't test everyone, we will only know for certain that local cases are going down if we see fewer patients in ICU two weeks later. I'm pretty sure general social distancing and closed borders will be for many months. If the decline is good, we may be able to open more businesses (with social distancing and congregation limits) and schools earlier (as in Sweden, Iceland and until recently Singapore). It is quite possible that we will be on again,off again with home confinement

 

[moa999]

Agree the fewer overseas arrivals is sending the number down
On the positive the positive rate from tests is going down.

12,054,868 Coronavirus cases in Australia - COVID Live

Live tracking of coronavirus cases, active, tests, deaths, ICU, hospitalisations and vaccinations in Australia

www.covidlive.com.au

For NSW this site gives a great graphical overview by postcode

COVID Cases By Postcode | COVID-19 NSW

See the latest COVID-19 data for your postcode/suburb including new cases today, cases this week and total cases.

covid19nsw.netlify.com

 

[scaredeycat]

The daily increase may well be going down just because we are having fewer overseas arrivals. The level of local spread is now the key factor. Given we can't test everyone, we will only know for certain that local cases are going down if we see fewer patients in ICU two weeks later. I'm pretty sure general social distancing and closed borders will be for many months. If the decline is good, we may be able to open more businesses (with social distancing and congregation limits) and schools earlier (as in Sweden, Iceland and until recently Singapore). It is quite possible that we will be on again,off again with home confinement

I wouldn't be following any cues from Sweden....

 

[lovetravellingoz]

. It is quite possible that we will be on again,off again with home confinement

Any thing is possible. However the current trend within Australia is hugely encouraging and I believe it is quite feasible that new cases per day will reach a stage where they are so low that some things now banned will be able to be resumed.

That is with the current quarantine/isolation of all new cases or those quite likely to be infected (ie all returnees from overseas) that we are progressively decreasing the numbers of those infected.

However until a vaccine is widely deployed practices like social distancing, handwashing, not shaking hands will all need to stay. Indeed as we still have the flu, gastro etc the last two practices in particular should be permanent changes even post vaccine as we should already have been doing them but were not.

Working at home as much as possible should also remain.

What will not be resumed to well after a vaccine is deplored throughout the world is international travel for leisure. What is quite feasible that here inside bubble Australia that some leisure travel within Australia could resume, but this would only occur when new cases becomes zero or virtually zero (ie as air and sea freight must continue then with infections still overseas some Australians in this chain will keep getting infected).


Caveat: The above is dependant on things not blowing up. So yes being strict now is what we ALL need to do. Bending the rules or seeking loopholes is what we ALL need not to do.

 

[jase05]

I wouldn't be following any cues from Sweden....

Absolutely, what a basket case

 

[serfty]

So I am getting confused about why we will need social distancing for so long? If we keep the borders closed and this rate of decline continues, why are we talking about peaks in July?

The graph is for daily new diagnosed cases. If it reaches zero that does not mean no-one has COVID-19.

Towards at the end of the ABC document is the important figure:

However, assuming recoveries are not limited to only four jurisdictions, the national number of confirmed current cases is less than 4,945.

COVID-19 is not beaten until that is close to zero (I doubt it will be zero in the next few years).

 

[Himeno]

The trend in daily new cases in Australia is encouraging.
View attachment 212001.

COVID-19 reporting

This page provides update on national COVID-19 spread, vaccination and treatment metrics.

www.health.gov.au

Will have to see if Canberra gets a spike when they start random testing tomorrow.

 

[amaroo]

<snip>
COVID-19 is not beaten until that is close to zero (I doubt it will be zero in the next few years).

Or until we go head first into the soup bowl of compulsory infection. My vote - lets get on with it!

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Or until we go head first into the soup bowl of compulsory infection. My vote - lets get on with it!

The more CV19 patients that pass through our hospitals, and in particular the respiratory wards, the higher the viral loads on the medical staff in those wards and the more likely that nurses and doctors will die. Perfectly healthy medical professionals with no comorbidities are dying around the world from CV19 and this is thought to be the main cause of this.

I know that my daughter who is a respiratory nurse, who already treats CV19 patients in the most risky of environments, is most concerned of the health implications of having too many many CV 19 patients at once. Though she despite this real fear will work tirelessly including the extra shifts that will arise if cases spike.

She also has noted that the PPE gear while present is not at world's best practice standard, and not at the standard that she would like.

So excuse me if I do not share your relish to throw our health workers under the CV 19 bus along with all the patients who will also die or suffer long term lung damage.

 

[N860CR]

I won’t go as far as saying we should put the elderly up against the wall... but at the end of the day, this can’t go on forever.

Today SA had an increase of 2 cases. 2! Queensland, 9! The other states. Minimal. Hell, based on this concept of “I’m so scared I’ll cross the road to avoid walking past someone”, I’d say more people were hit by cars!

If we continue to go down this path of our illustrious leaders saying “oh expect this for months and months, but we expect you to chat with your commercial landlords and just come to an agreement” then far more people will die from the economic impacts than the corona issue. I’ve read figures suggesting a global financial downturn of 6-8%. How many millions of deaths will that cause?

I feel a little more exposed as my partner is an ICU nurse at RPA and my best friend a registrar at the same... but the reports I’m getting are of a hospital system that is becoming well and truly overcooked without a sign of the guests arriving. The risk at the moment seems to be people suffering from deferred surgery while rooms sit empty.

Not saying we should be starting “project sunrise - Milan nonstop”, but we need to stop playing popular politics and just start moving forward.

Population - 25Mil
Cases - 5500
Full Recoveries - 2500
ICU - less than 100
Deaths - 35 (11 off the same cruise ship)

Not looking great in America. But this is not a pandemic in Australia - and given our border is closed for the first time in history, it won’t become one. No number of entitled Sydneysiders at Bondi will change that.

Sorry if that doesn’t suit the rhetoric.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I won’t go as far as saying we should put the elderly up against the wall... but at the end of the day, this can’t go on forever.

Today SA had an increase of 2 cases. 2! Queensland, 9! The other states. Minimal. Hell, based on this concept of “I’m so scared I’ll cross the road to avoid walking past someone”, I’d say more people were hit by cars!

If we continue to go down this path of our illustrious leaders saying “oh expect this for months and months, but we expect you to chat with your commercial landlords and just come to an agreement” then far more people will die from the economic impacts than the corona issue. I’ve read figures suggesting a global financial downturn of 6-8%. How many millions of deaths will that cause?

I feel a little more exposed as my partner is an ICU nurse at RPA and my best friend a registrar at the same... but the reports I’m getting are of a hospital system that is becoming well and truly overcooked without a sign of the guests arriving. The risk at the moment seems to be people suffering from deferred surgery while rooms sit empty.

Not saying we should be starting “project sunrise - Milan nonstop”, but we need to stop playing popular politics and just start moving forward.

Population - 25Mil
Cases - 5500
Full Recoveries - 2500
ICU - less than 100
Deaths - 35 (11 off the same cruise ship)

Not looking great in America. But this is not a pandemic in Australia - and given our border is closed for the first time in history, it won’t become one. No number of entitled Sydneysiders at Bondi will change that.

Sorry if that doesn’t suit the rhetoric.

I think what your stats are showing is that social distancing etc are working in Australia, and I would estimate that they are working a lot more successfully than our health officials would have hoped.

Now you can just throw this all away and start having people being deliberately infected and wear the deaths and other trauma OR you can just continue on the path on which we are already well advanced on and where it would now seem that the number of new daily cases will drop to a very few, and that these will mainly be from quarantined people arriving in Australia.

Ar that time, which now looks to not be that far away, it will then allow some easing of our current restrictions so that a more normal life and economy will be able to be resumed within the largely CV 19 free bubble that Australia will be. Precautions will be needed to maintain that bubble from the interactions that will be occurring with the sea and air freight, and to also protect from a cluster occurring from such sources. But inactive jobs and businesses will be able to resume. Maybe not all of them, and practices such as more people working at home in greater numbers for at a healthy % of their working week will most likely remain etc.

Based on the current trends my belief is that this is now quite plausible and achievable.

 

[N860CR]

I think what your stats are showing is that social distancing etc are working in Australia, and I would estimate that they are working a lot more successfully than our health officials would have hoped.

In fairness, they’re not my stats. They’re the stats.

This virus has only reached “pandemic” status in very limited countries, most of which are very different to Australia.

We’ve avoided it. A lot of shutting down has happened and it’s cost a lot of livelihoods. The plan now has to be “how do we move forward”, not “lets run with this until it suits our political agenda”

 

[lovetravellingoz]

In fairness, they’re not my stats. They’re the stats.

Yes agree. I just meant in terms of the stats you quoted.

This virus has only reached “pandemic” status in very limited countries, most of which are very different to Australia.

We’ve avoided it. A lot of shutting down has happened and it’s cost a lot of livelihoods. The plan now has to be “how do we move forward”, not “lets run with this until it suits our political agenda”

I am not sure about the limited part.

However I agree it needs to be “how do we move forward”. I think our politicians are probably worried though that if they flag in advance that we are about to ease off in future, that some may see it as permission to ease off too early and if that happens it could take off again.

I do however believe, as I have posted in this and other threads, that if the current trends remained that Australia will be able to re-activate on broad level.

I know that my own core business has had its income drop to almost zero and so I would love a re-activated economy. But I prefer to stomp on new cases for a bit longer first as I believe that this will be more sustainable and avoid a stop/go cycle.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I won’t go as far as saying we should put the elderly up against the wall... but at the end of the day, this can’t go on forever.

How about if we flip this? No one under 60 can have access to a ventilator. No one under 50 gets admitted to a hospital.

 

[Pushka]

However I agree it needs to be “how do we move forward”. I think our politicians are probably worried though that if they flag in advance that we are about to ease off in future, that some may see it as permission to ease off too early and if that happens it could take off again.

I do however believe, as I have posted in this and other threads, that if the current trends remained that Australia will be able to re-activate on broad level.

That's my query too. At what point do we start to ease. It's almost like in terms of absolute numbers, Australia has been too successful. Vaccine a long way off. We can't stall the economy until the vaccine is released. We do need to have people develop immunity through exposure. The virus will get here - at some stage so - what next? Maybe continue a lock down of vulnerable but slow exposure to those more likely to recover quickly? Big call.

I am also thinking that if people from Ruby didn't self isolate then we will start to see the impact of that in community spread.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Passengers from the Ruby are self isolating.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Ignoring the stats. The other way that we know that we are winning the war at present is that unlike the UK and USA we are not seeking to convert our conference buildings into massive cv19 wards.

If the projections were grim this would be occurring already.

Yes the number of icu beds have been expanded through accelerating new builds, repurposing some wards and recommissioning some recently closed facilities.....but we have not sought at present to build the massive temporary cv 19 wards.

 

[Pushka]

Passengers from the Ruby are self isolating.

I know. That's the scary bit. Given that didn't work too well.