Blog Day 142 - Tuesday 24 November 2020

Day 24:  Zero - Zero

Day 1:   Zero - Zero - Zero

Twenty four days with zero new infections and zero deaths in Victoria.

But also 1 day with no new infections, no deaths and most importantly no current cases in the state of Victoria.

This is great news which means basically as far as we know the virus has been eliminated in Victoria, however keep in mind that interstate travel has been severely restricted and there has been no international travel into the state for the last few months.  Victoria's next big test will come with the reopening of the state borders such as recently happened with NSW and the reopening of the state to international travel.

The last person in hospital due to the virus was released yesterday.  He was an elderly man who had been in hospital for a couple of months.  His wife, also elderly, was recently released from hospital also.

We are currently going to start accepting limited overseas travellers on 7 December, initially only 160 per day.  Lets see how that goes.

Of the 95 active cases in Australia 55 have been as a result of returning overseas travellers being infected.

In the last 24 hours there were 8 new cases recorded Australia wide, 0 in Vic, 6 in NSW, 1 in Qld and 1 in SA.  Apart from the one in SA the others were all returning overseas travellers.  These results were from nearly 10,000 tests in Vic, nearly 7,000 tests in NSW, over 5,000 tests in Qld and nearly 7,000 tests in SA.  These test numbers, particularly in Vic and NSW are down considerably from recent peaks, however I daresay fewer people are experiencing the symptoms of the virus and therefore less testing is being conducted and possibly a hangover from the lower testing over the weekend.

Nationally there are 95 current active cases with 0 in Vic, 13 in NSW, 15 in Qld, 21 in WA and 39 in SA.

Worldwide the figures are bouncing up out of the weekend lows with 531,000 new cases reported in the last 24 hours and 8,340 new deaths reported in the same period.

Britain is currently reporting an average of 440 deaths per day with 511 in the previous 24 hours.  In two days, at that rate Britain, will exceed our national total of deaths of 907 for the entire pandemic.  Britain has reported 54,000 deaths for the entire pandemic.

By way of further comparison Britain has reported nearly 1,500,000 infections for the pandemic with an average of 22,000 new infections per day for the last week.  Britain's daily infection rate is not much more than our total number of infections for the pandemic at 28,000.  

But before you get carried away and say "Graeme, what about the difference in the population between Britain and Australia's".  Britain's deaths per million of population is 812 and Australia's 35.  And they still haven't gone into a lockdown as tough as Victoria's most recent.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Towards Covid Normal – 2^nd 14 day stage – Day 2

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
22/11	27,819	12	20,345	0	907	819	22	1	0	0
23/11	27,828	8	20,345	0	907	819	22	1	0	0
24/11	27,843	8	20,345	0	907	819	21	0	0	0
25/11

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
23/11	58,970,438	494,689	1,393,227	7,452
24/11	59,501,552	531,114	1,401,567	8,340
25/11

And now the Towards Covid Normal remembers;

Remember: Wear your mask when you are buying your Bunnings sausage; no holidays in Britain for a while yet.