Blog Day 498 - Thursday 12 August 2021 - Day 7 of Covid Lockdown V6.0

Well it is all happening, in the last 24 hours; 21 new locally acquired cases in Victoria, some from an unknown source and some who hadn't been in quarantine whilst infectious; 345 new locally acquired cases in NSW including some regional cases, one new case in ACT and 10 new cases in Qld but no new cases in FNQ.

As a consequence of all this Victoria has extended its lockdown by one week but most likely at least 2 weeks, Sydney and parts of NSW are in lockdown for the foreseeable future, the ACT is going into a one week lockdown and FNQ has come out of its 3 day lockdown.

As I explained to some of my many FNQ readers a 3 day lockdown isn't a lockdown it is a 3 day long weekend! 

In an interesting case one of the participants at the harness racing at Melton has tested positive, he was a little hoarse. ROFL!

In normal news, Transurban has gone to the Victorian government and the market and announced that the West Gate Tunnel project is likely to run at least $3.3 billion over budget with no known completion date. Remember this was the project that Transurban sold to the state Labor government without any tender process and of course given the cost of the project has doubled the cost benefit analysis is blown out of the water.  (Remember the Andrews Labor govt didn't proceed with the East West Link was because he reckoned the cost/benefit analysis didn't stack up, lucky that only cost us $1.3 billion not to get a tunnel.  Quite cheap in comparison).

In the meantime the good citizens of this fair state are paying for the tunnel that doesn't exist in increased tolls on Transurban's other toll roads and for at least the next 20 years.  Nice work if you can get it.

In the last 24 hours NSW recorded 345 new local virus infections as a result of the 152,000 test results received in the same period.  That is a lot of woolly sticks shoved up a lot of noses.  Unfortunately NSW has reported two more deaths.  Currently NSW has 374 covid patients in hospital with 62 in ICU and 29 on ventilators.  Given these numbers I reckon further deaths are inevitable.

Victoria received the results of 45,000 tests, which doesn't appear to be a lot given the numbers of infections being recorded in very specific areas.  In the last 24 hours there were 23 new local infections reported.

To date Australia has vaccinated 45% of the population over 16 with 1 injections and 24% with 2.  Of the population over 70 82% have received one injection and 49% have received two.

Internationally I thought that we would have a look at some countries that have been slipping a bit below the radar.  Although the figures below are for one day only they appear to be fairly representative of what is happening in each country.  They also all appear to have increased dramatically from lows reported in March/April this year.

Country                     Daily Infections             Daily Deaths 

Iraq                                9,970                                66

Philippines                     8,442                                92

Malaysia                        19,991                            200

Cuba                                8,936                               93

Vietnam                           8,043                            388

Thailand                         19,843                            235

Corona Virus Daily Stats – 12 August 2021 – Day 7 of Covid Lockdown V 6.0

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
01/08
02/08	34,612	230	8	20,950	2	0	3,338	100	134	?
03/08
04/08
05/08
06/08	35,698	308	0	20,967	6	0	4,252	129	75	7
07/08
08/08	36,328	290	15	21,010	13	2	4,730	121	100	4
09/08
10/08	37,010	383	4	21,041	20	0	5,335	121	111	3
11/08
12/08	37,754	382	3	21,079	23	0	5,884	105	137	2