Blog Day 374 - Tuesday 6 April 2021

After a couple of days away from the blog I am back on deck for today at least.  On Sunday I had a very pleasant day visiting some friends down the peninsula for a Easter Sunday lunch, that couldn't be beat, and some convivial socializing around the pool.  On Monday I headed the other way out of town to visit some friends at Mt Derrimut down past Geelong.  Once again a pleasant lunch and catch up.  

I think in both cases the kiddies may have had a little too much chocolate.

As some of you may be aware I live on my own and consequently my cooking is more of something I do for survival rather than something that I enjoy doing.  However, a recipe sometimes catches my attention and I think "I can do that".  In today's Good Food section of the Age is a recipe for Teriyaki salmon which is described thus, and I quote "Teriyaki salmon is a dish well worth your attention.  It can be whipped up in minutes and is likely to become a family staple".  Terrific, I think, and then I check the list of ingredients; salmon fillets - tick; cornflour - nup; vegetable oil - tick (probably out of date); soy sauce - tick (to have on my dimmys); mirin - what the heck is mirin?; sake - isn't that a drink?; sugar - tick; spring onions - at least I know where they are at the supermarket and what they look like.

I don't think that teriyaki salmon is about to become a staple around this household, maybe be back to the party pies for me.

Saint Jacinda the patron saint and PM of NZ is about to announce the opening of the travel bubble between Australia and NZ which means that residents of both countries can travel freely between each country without having to quarantine in either direction.  The only catch is that is there is an outbreak of the virus in either country return travel may be difficult and quarantine requirements could be reintroduced.  But it sounds promising anyway.

Victoria has now achieved 39 days with no local infections and at the moment has one reported infection who is an international flight crew member who is in hotel quarantine.

NSW has reported seven new infections, all ROTs and that is the total new infections Australia wide for the last 24 hours.

Victoria received the results of 7,300 tests in the last 24 hours; NSW 4,800 and Qld 5,300.  Remember this is the first working day after the easter break so I am assuming testing numbers and results are lower due to the holidays.

Nationally there are 148 active cases of which 129 are ROTs.  NSW has 41 active cases, 40 of whom are ROTs and Qld has 70 active cases of which 52 are ROTs.

Queensland's response to the outbreaks from the hospital seems to have been almost text book with contact tracing, quarantine, isolation, and limited lockdown all working together to control the spread of the virus almost immediately.  Maybe they are the state with the gold class & world standard virus control procedures.

So far Australia has administered 847,000 doses of the vaccines.  I don't think that we have started administering any 2nd doses yet so it should be safe to assume that 847,000 Australians have received their 1st shot.  Only about 25 million to go and yet the feds and states are still arguing about who is responsible for the slow roll out.

Worldwide the infection and death figures are continuing to increase.  Over the last three day there were 629,000; 533,000 and 448,000 infections reported worldwide.  On 03/04 there were 10,000 deaths reported; 4/04 8,000 and on 5/04 6,000 deaths reported.  Although I am hesitant to give much credibility to the figures from over the Easter weekend it would appear that both the numbers of infections and deaths worldwide continue to increase.

The US infection and death figures seem to be inconsistent over the last few days.  On 03/04 the US reported 70,000 new infections; on 04/04 they reported 62,000 and on 05/04 they reported 34,000 new infections.  Similarly for the same dates they reported 967 deaths, 676 deaths and 222 deaths.  Difficult to draw any conclusions from these figures.

The UK figures are more consistent and appear to be declining with 2,400 new infections reported for 05/04 and 10 deaths, although the death figure appears to be a little low.

The next couple of days will see how accurate these figures are.

Turkey has reported more than 40,000 infections per day for the last 4 days and now appears to be second to Brazil in daily new infections.  Keep an eye on this space to see how this develops.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – April 2021 – Covid Normal (for the time being)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus ROTs Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Vic ROTS Increase	*Aus Active Infection	*Aus ROTs	Vic Active Infection	Vic ROTs
01/04	29,323	17	11	20,484	0	0	163		1	1
02/04	29,335	8	7	20,484	0	0	159	147	1	1
03/04	29,341	6	5	20,484	0	0	151	143	1	1
04/04	29,348	7	7	20,484	0	0	143		1	1
05/04	29,357	9	9	20,484	0	0	149		1	1
06/04	26,363	7	7	20,484	0	0	148	129	1	1
07/04

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/04/21	128,822,013	683,042	2,815,151	12,262
02/04/21	129,524,770	711,626	2,827,020	11,861
03/04/21	130,235,782	628,853	2,837,694	10,189
04/04/21	130,768,885	533,103	2,846,114	8,420
05/04/21	131,217,283	448,398	2,852,494	6,380
06/04/21

	US & UK Daily New Infections & Death Numbers
Date	US New Infections	US Daily Deaths	UK New Infections	UK Daily Deaths
01/04/21	66,173	1,042	4,115	43
02/04/21	78,445	1,048	4,565	51
03/04/21	69,822	967	3,422	52
04/04/21	62,154	676	3,424	10
05/04/21	34,282	222	2,405	10
06/04/21