Blog Day 459 - Sunday 04 July 2021 - Day 10 of Covid Normal (Sort Of)

 Happy independence day to all of my American readers, god bless the USofA and all that sail in her.

It is funny the things that you see when walking that would be missed driving around. As I walked past the pub carpark this morning I spied a car parked there with a big sign on the side telling all and sundry that the driver is a "Lactation Consultant".  Was this person in the pub on a business call or purely for social purposes, whichever, I hope that they were maintaining their 1.5 metre distancing.

Winter has hit with a vengeance with a maximum of 11 degrees yesterday and 13 today.  Headgear for my daily walk has transitioned from Akubra to woolly beany.  I was talking to Flashy & Lady P in FNQ on the telephone this morning and they told me that it is 27 degrees with blue skies there today.  But remember if you go anywhere near the water in FNQ you will get eaten by a crocodile.  So would you rather be a little bit cold in Victoria or torn to shreds by a crocodile in a death roll in FNQ!

Most of the country seems to be recovering from the Covid hysteria of the last week or so.  NSW is the only state experiencing any worrying level of community transmission with 16 new cases reported in the last 24 hours.  Queensland had one new community case in the last 24 hours and all other states and territories including Victoria reported zero new community infections.  Various red zones are gradually being downgraded to yellow.

Nationally there were 19 new infections reported of which 2 were ROTs and 17 were new local infections as above.

Australia wide there are 421 known infectious cases of which 88 are ROTs which means that there are 333 local community infections nationally.  Of these 333 local cases by far the majority are in NSW with 279, Qld comes next with 27 and then Victoria with 7.

In the last 24 hours 12,344 vaccines were administered in Victoria and 15,280 in NSW.

To date there has been a total of 8,149,273 doses of the vaccine administered in Australia of these 6,331,999 have been first doses and 1,817,274 have been second doses.  (I would think that the 2nd doses should start to escalate fairly quickly from here on.  I got my 1st dose of the AZ as early as I could and I am not eligible for my 2nd dose until early August).

Of those 8,149,273 doses, 3,490,339 have been administered by the hubs, 443,092 in the care system and 4,215,842 by GPs.  I am a bit surprised by this as I would have thought that the hubs would have administered more than GPs, but there you go, even I can be wrong occasionally. 

Worldwide, India's new daily infections are holding steady, the US has shown a reasonably large increase but they did report lower than usual figures in the last couple of days.  Maybe today's US figure is playing a bit of catch up.

The UK daily infection rates continue to climb and this is being driven by the circulation of the Delta variant.  Not withstanding the increase in infections the UK is still going to relax its virus restriction on 19 July.  It would appear that the UK is depending on its vaccination rate to manage the virus.  Currently 67% of Brits have had one jab and 50% have received two.  It will be interesting to see how this strategy pans out.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – 04 July 2021 – Day 10 of Covid Normal (Sort Of)

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
01/07
02/07	30,684	40	6	20,715	3	3	378	102	32	23
03/07
04/07	30,753	19	2	20,714	1	1	421	88	23	16
05/07