Blog Day 90: Sunday 21 June 2020

The Victorian authorities are now more than nervous, at least 44 new infections have been recorded in the last 48 hours with 25 of those in the last 24 hours. Of concern is that a number of these infections are as a result of community transmissions with tracing and tracking of contacts now being undertaken.  I hope everybody has downloaded the Corona Virus app.

The lifting of restrictions that was supposed to take place tomorrow have now been put on hold and some restrictions that had been relaxed have been tightened up again.  Hotels, restaurants etc that were to have the limits on the number of patrons lifted to 50 tomorrow have been told that the 20 patron limit will continue to apply until at least 12 July.  Family gatherings have been reduced from 20 back to 5.  This is as a result of the large number of infections being caused by transmission between some family groupings.

The transmission of the virus from the Rydges Hotel cluster continues.  It appears that some lonely security contractors may have had some contact with some lonely quarantinees, and who can blame them in these troubled times.  One must take ones comfort where one can.

The Essendon football club has had its match this weekend postponed until further notice due to one of its players testing positive to the virus.  All players and staff who had contact with him have had to go into isolation, so Essendon's footy games for the next couple of weeks are also in doubt.  

I think that the return to footy was a bit early particularly as there had been some examples of players not taking the quarantine and isolation rules too seriously.  Maybe the AFL has more influence in this state than we thought.  AFL involved in branch stacking maybe.......

I see that the Queensland government is trying to blame the rate of infection in Victoria for not reopening its borders.  As if the Queenslanders don't hate us enough.

The ski season opens in Victoria tomorrow, is this a good idea?

The Shrine had previously advised that it was reopening on Wednesday 1st July, albeit with limited and controlled numbers of visitors and access limited to certain areas.  I wonder given the surge in infections and the tightening of  restrictions elsewhere whether this will go ahead or not.

The numbers below speak for themselves.  The world wide figures make our problems seem like small beer.  I heard that one of the states in the US is still reporting something like 600 new infections a day and it wasn't one of the big states.  Sort of puts a bit of perspective on our situation.

Corona Virus Daily Stats: Day 167

Vic: 1,836 infected (+44 since 19/6) - 19 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 7,460 infected (+51 since 19/6) - 102 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 6,888 recovered - current hospital 16 (+2) - current ICU 2 (+/-0)

World: 8,488,977 infected - 463,999 deaths (increase of 10,018)