Blog Day 134 - Monday 16 November 2020

A couple of things to be concerned about today. South Australia is reporting 17 new infections today up from three yesterday.  All 17 infectious people are from the same cluster and 15 of them are from the same large family group and at this stage it appears as though the virus has been transmitted from somebody working in the quarantine system in a medi-hotel.  Two of the infected people worked in an aged care facility whilst infectious and another in a Hungry Jacks restaurant.  Apparently a couple of schools have been closed initially for 24 hours as a student or students who attended those schools had been in contact with an infectious person.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if SA can stop further spreading of the infection in its  tracks.  Lets hope that SA's tracking and tracing regime is better than Victoria's.

Is this what we will have to accept as "covid normal" where cases will pop up from time to time, in this instance it is SA's turn but it could have been any state. 

The SA government is now saying that anybody working in the hotel quarantine system now has to be virus tested every 7 days.  Call me cautious but I would have thought that this would have been the case anyway.  Looks like Victoria isn't the only state to shut the virus stable door after the virus horse has bolted.  Victoria has declared SA a virus 'hotspot' but hasn't closed the borders.

Adelaide is due to host the first cricket test for the summer against India, anybody at Cricket Australia nervous?

The other thing that concerns me is that Tennis Australia (TA) has declared that the Australian Open will go ahead in Melbourne next January with the players etc being isolated in some sort of bubble, possibly similar to what the AFL did in Qld.  This is possibly manageable.  But the worrying thing is that TA want to play all of the preliminary games in Melbourne as well.  These are the various games that are played in Hobart, Perth, Brisbane etc prior to the Australian Open.  This would mean a lot of players, team members and officials coming and going.  Do we have the capacity and the skills to safely manage that?

Would spectators be allowed into the Australian Open matches or any of the preliminary matches?

Apparently TA has announced this prior to consultation with the Victorian government.

Although things aren't too flash in SA Victoria has recorded its 17th day of zero - zero, no new cases and no new deaths.  There are 70 active cases in Australia, Victoria has 3, NSW 19 and now SA with 19.  Of these 70 cases 44 originated overseas.

Victoria's rolling 14 day average remains at 0 for both metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Currently Australia wide there has been 907 deaths recorded with no new deaths for 19 days.  Just keep that in mind when you have a look at the worldwide figures.

The worldwide figures are down a bit however we can take no comfort from that given the vagaries of the worldwide reporting over the weekend.  There were 485,000 new infections reported worldwide in the last 24 hours and nearly 6,000 deaths.  Even with a hiccough in SA we are still looking pretty good compared to the rest of the world and that is probably an understatement.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Towards Covid Normal – 14 day stage – Day 7

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
08/11	27,655	3	20,345	0	907	819	19	2	1	0
9/11	27,665	7	20,345	0	907	819	19	2	1	0
10/11	27,678	10	20,345	0	907	819	21	2	0	0
11/11	27,686	8	20,345	0	907	819	21	2	0	0
12/11	27,694	8	20,345	0	907	819	23	2	0	0
13/11	27,702	5	20,345	0	907	819	21	2	0	0
14/11	27,709	6	20,345	0	907	819	26	2	0	0
15/11	27,724	13	20,345	0	907	819	21	2	0	0
16/11	27,745	16	20,345	0	907	818	22	2	0	0
17/11

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
08/11	50,263,739	617,803	1,256,352	8,380
09/11	50,721,774	458,035	1,261,736	5,384
10/11	51,254,740	532,966	1,269,350	7,614
11/11	51,809,844	550,104	1,279,531	10,181
12/11	52,418,061	608,217	1,288,778	9,247
13/11	53,091,981	673,920	1,299,407	10,629
14/11	53,722,973	630,992	1,308,487	9,080
15/11	54,318,729	595,756	1,318,038	9,551
16/11	54,804,194	485,465	1,324,025	5,987
17/11

And now the Towards Covid Normal remembers;

Remember: Keep wearing your mask!; remember to remember Remembrance Day; the price of corona virus liberty is eternal vigilance; enjoy the new found freedoms but not too much, just yet; don't get your tennis racquet out just yet.