I'm going to lock in the following predictions for reaching the roadmap targets in Victoria:
🔴Phase B💉70% 16+: 🗓Thursday 21st October
🟡Phase C💉80% 16+: 🗓Friday 29th October
That's 5 & 13 days from now. We can do this Victoria!
🗺VIC COVID-19 Map - Situation at lockdown
#COVID19vic
This map shows what was known and unknown when the Victorian lockdown started.
Green = already known
Yellow = already acquired infection, but not yet known
Orange = unknow acquisition/possibly acquired after lockdown
Good news for the 5 unlinked cases in today's VIC numbers:
- 3 have already been linked
- 2 are from the same household (Lygon Street residential tower) and remain under investigation, but "highest risk" close contacts of these people have all tested negative.
🧵VIC - Outbreak progression
#COVID19Vic
It can be easy to treat the current outbreak in VIC as a single cluster, and compare it to how we expect others to progress. A simple chart like this tells a concerning story of growth:
This thread shows why this outbreak is different 🔽
A big thanks to Jeroen and the Vic Health team for the detail given on the cases in yesterday's press conference. Being able to visualise the chains of transmission lets people "see" the outbreak in a way that isn't possible with case numbers alone.
@MartinFoleyMP
@VictorianCHO
I'll do a full breakdown later, but did want to share this now as it's good news that was glossed over a bit in the VIC press conference:
🔗8 of the previously unlinked cases have been linked.
That brings the total for previous days down from 24 to 16
Does this mean Victoria has turned a corner? Not quite, and the outcome is still not clear. But there's much more reason to be optimistic when looking into the detail then when just looking at the high level view, and it explains why the progression may not be as expected so far.
Australia has passed 1,000 reported COVID-19 deaths in 2023.
This is a week earlier than the same in 2022, and it took 45 weeks into 2021 to reach that figure; COVID-19 deaths in 2020 remained under 1,000 (912).
Total deaths from the pandemic in Australia have now passed 18,000.
With such limited weekly covid information now available, I have decided to end the weekly state overviews.
I'll still continue to provide some data going forward - such as Aged Care reporting and some monthly reporting (especially from ABS) - but it will be less frequent.
🗺VIC COVID-19 transmission diagram - 16th July 2021
For each case:
- Shows location and potential date(s) of infection
- Show potential and known infectious periods
- Shows when test returned positive, and when the case would have been isolating
State breakdown:
NSW: 22,152
VIC: 96,337
QLD: 19,251
WA: 24,494
TAS: 10,048
SA: 7,107
ACT: 4,845
NT: 1,508
This is largely due to NSW having a public holiday yesterday, but it's still an achievement.
@juliette_io
There have been 27 Delta outbreaks and interstate incursions/clusters in Australia.
16 of these are no longer active, and a further 7 have been effectively stopped.
Some personal news, which I don't usually bore you all with but in this case it's relevant - I've started a new job this week!
Unfortunately this means for now at least my Friday Covid updates (and other general daytime tweeting) may be delayed until later in the evening.
So rather than view this outbreak as a single cluster, it can make more sense if we break it down into the main clusters, as they are fairly independent:
Jeroen: "The Shepparton outbreak is not as yet genomically or otherwise connected into what we are seeing in Melbourne ... Is that a new incursion in from NSW? Is it some kind of other connection point between the existing outbreak we've known about? We don't have that data"
There are many Pfizer appointments available across Victoria in the next week - consider bringing forward your 2nd dose if able.
The more people that bring their 2nd doses forward to 3 weeks, the faster Victoria hits its roadmap targets of 70% and 80%.
We thank everyone who got vaccinated and tested yesterday.
Our thoughts are with those in hospital, and the families of people who have lost their lives.
More data soon:
#COVID19Vic
#COVID19VicData
Victoria appear to have reversed their decision to stop state covid reporting, with the covid data page receiving an update this morning with data up until last Thursday.
Across all cases in the Victoria outbreak:
- 16 cases are partially vaccinated
- 5 cases are fully vaccinated
All of the above are either asymptomatic or experiencing only mild symptoms.
Very similar to an outbreak in July 2021 in Queensland. A student became infected, and it rapidly spread to 143 cases within 3 weeks.
- 6 cases in the initial household
- 12 cases at a high school and 59 cases at a primary school the children attended
- 10 cases via Karate class
One child goes to school and then Taekwondo while pre-symptomatic. Within 3 weeks 75 households become infected, resulting in 201 infections. It’s wild that the role of children in this pandemic was ever questioned.
In today's Victoria dataset, the case from the Mooney Valley Racecourse test site has changed from:
"Acquired in Australia, unknown source"
To
"Contact with a confirmed case"
🗺VIC COVID-19 transmission diagram - 17th July 2021
- Separated Hume and Maribyrnong cluster diagrams
- Added exposure site count for each date (0 since lockdown started)
- Added lockdown period
🧵NSW Outbreak national impact
As at 19th August 2021
#COVID19Aus
The outbreak in NSW has caused local cases in every state and territory except NT, and caused lockdowns in all but QLD and TAS. It has also caused an outbreak in NZ.
This thread outlines the scope of the impact🔽
💉Lots of good vaccination news!
✅VIC has reached 50% first doses, and more than 2 million fully vaccinated
✅Nationally, more than 6 million people are fully vaccinated
VIC Onwards transmission - 16th July 2021
Cases -> Subsequent transmissions (each)
20 -> 0
1 -> 1
1 -> 4
1 -> 5
1 -> 9
Only 17% of cases have transmitted to others
38% of cases come from a single source
We can now see several things:
- As the new clusters emerge, isolating cases drop significantly initially
- The original cluster is largely reducing
- Only 1 significant cluster appears to be rapidly growing - the Wyndham cluster, which Jeroen raised today as the main concern.
💉VIC - 1,000,000 doses in 5 weeks
As at 14th September 2021
#COVID19Vic
⚪Day: 32 / 35
🟢Current: 1,017,593 doses (✅102%)
🔵Estimated total: 🔺1,130,429 doses (✅113%)
Estimate is based on 7 day average doses
Sad to hear of the passing of Mary-Louise McLaws. My condolences to her family & friends.
This country and the wider international community benefited greatly from her work during the pandemic.
The daily data has been removed from the Victorian coronavirus site, it is assumed there will be no further daily updates.
With the weekly data only reporting averages for hospitalisations and ICU, we will no longer have accurate data on these values.
There is obviously a lot of attention being paid to how recent cases in NSW will translate to serious illness.
In Victoria's most recent outbreak, it took 10 days for a case to be admitted to the ICU, 15 days before a case was on a ventilator, and 28 days before the first death
9 LGAs in Victoria increased their fully vaccinated coverage by more than 10% in the last week:
• Hume🔺11.40%
• Swan Hill🔺11.00%
• Wyndham🔺10.90%
• Melton🔺10.70%
• Casey🔺10.60%
• Greater Dandenong🔺10.50%
• Mitchell🔺10.20%
• Whittlesea🔺10.20%
• Mildura🔺10.20%
Today marks 14 days since the last Alpha case in the QLD outbreak (Portuguese restaurant).
All local cases in Australia are now Delta.
The first local Delta case in Australia was 6th May.
International studies on lockdowns have little relevance to Australia, where these measures were used to eliminate rather than suppress. These claims also don't address consequences of letting it rip, and a quick comparison of AUS vs UK or USA in 2020/2021 is pretty clear.
- Other clusters have remained relatively steady, but combined they give the appearance of significant growth.
Note: Unlinked cases will tend to be higher on the most recent days, as they've had the least chance to be linked. This doesn't automatically imply they are growing
By this time today, over a quarter of all Australians have, or have had, COVID-19 over the course of this pandemic.
Sadly, 7,613 Australians have died as a result.
In NSW, it took 26 days to go from below 500 cases/day, to the peak of 1599, in Aug-Sep 2021.
It has now taken just 5 days to go from 485 cases/day to 1742 in December.
In the VIC case dataset today, 2 previously under investigation cases are now linked. These are both the remaining UI cases in Glenroy.
I can't see another case in this cluster that remains under investigation.
Vaccination status of local cases in NSW up to 3rd July
- 3% of cases (9) were fully vaccinated
- 4% of cases (11) were partially vaccinated
- 87% of cases (251) were unvaccinated
2023 has been an interesting year for me personally, mostly for the positive.
Thanks to all who have assisted, supported or appreciated my work.
I wish everyone well going into 2024 and hope you have a safe and happy New Year.