Blog Day 629 - Wednesday 29 December 2021 - Day 60 of Covid Nearly Normal

After returning from my well earned break and looking forward to settling in for a couple of days of intriguing test cricket, guess what happens?  The Aussies beat the poms in two days and a morning session by one innings and a hundred and something runs.

Having shellacked the poms in three tests of a five test series this means that we retain the ashes and the last two tests are pretty much a dead rubber although the Australians will be playing for a complete whitewash of the series and the English chaps will trying to salvage a bit of pride and to ensure that they don't have their MBE's removed on return to the Old Dart.  They are luck, in the olden days they would have lost their heads.

Talking about wheels falling off it looks like the wheels have fallen off the Victorian covid testing program.  In the last 24 hours Victoria received the results of only 75,000 tests and NSW received 158,000 results.  Many people in Victoria are not receiving their results in the targeted 24 hours and many are waiting 72 to 96 hours.  

This morning by 7.20am, only minutes after opening, 8 testing sites were at full capacity and forced to close. By 8.30am a further 13 testing sites were a full capacity and also not taking further customers

To add to the confusion the Victorian Labour government website has testing sites listed as open that aren't open, so people are turning up and sitting in queues at sites where there isn't even any testing happening.

And would you believe some of the sites run by private pathology clinics are closed for the Christmas holiday break and they are still listed as open.

You would think that after two years the Labour government and the Labour minister running the health department would have their act together and we wouldn't have to be putting up with this rubbish. 

And did I mention the premier is on holidays!  

I certainly hope that the experts have got their sums and predictions correct on this suppression model, cos if they haven't we are in for a god awful mess.

In the last 24 hours Victoria recorded 3,800 new infections and NSW 11,200 new cases.  Fortunately at the moment the Victorian covid hospital admissions are remaining steady with the ICU and ventilator numbers declining.

I daresay that this the way that suppression is supposed to work, new infection numbers are allowed to run rampant as long as hospital admissions and deaths don't run rampant in parallel.  The hospital admission numbers will be interesting in a couple of weeks when these increased numbers have the opportunity to flow through.  

Victorian daily death numbers are remaining stable ranging between two to eight deaths per day.

The following table is interesting, it tells us, for example, that of the 7,800 NSW folk admitted to hospital due to the virus in the last 6 months or so, 64.6% were unvaccinated, 7.6% partially vaccinated and only 7.5% fully vaccinated.  A fair argument for vaccination I reckon. Unfortunately as yet I haven't been able to similar table for Victoria.

NSW VACCINATION STATUS

16 Jun 21 to 04 Dec 21

CATEGORY	CASES	NONE	PART	FULL
Cases	77,518	48.6%	8.8%	10.0%
Hospitalised	7,841	64.6%	7.6%	7.5%
ICU	1,491	71.5%	6.4%	4.4%
Deaths	576	71.2%	12.8%	14.6%

Notwithstanding the figures above the daily new vaccination numbers are certainly grinding to a halt.

The figures in the brackets in the table below are the vaccination percentages for the eligible population as at 23/12,

Vaccination Percentages as at 29/12

    State                1st Dose %                            2nd Dose %

    Vic                    93.5 (93.5)                                91.9 (91.8)

    NSW                94.2 (94.2)                                92.7 (92.6)

    Qld                   89.2 (89.0)                                84.7  (84.2)

    Aus                    93.4 (93.2)                                90.1 (89.9)

    Corona Virus Daily Stats – 29 December 2021 – Day 60 of Covid Nearly Normal

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus 1st Dose Vacc	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	NSW Increase	*Aus Active Infection	NSW Active Infection	Vic Active Infection	Aus 2nd Dose Vacc
01/12					1,179	251
02/12					1,419	271
03/12	214,881	1,538	92.6%	125,474	1,189	337	15,999	2,851	12,913	87.4%
04/12					1,349	323
05/12					966	281
06/12	219,123	1,281	92.8%	128,862	1,073	208	20,006	3,251	16,503	88.0%
07/12
08/12					1,312	403
09/12					1,232	420
10/12
11/12					1,193	560
12/12
13/12					1,240	536
14/12	232,766	2,015	93.4%	138,409	1,189	804	16,743	5,179	11,051	89.5%
15/12					1,405	1,360
16/12	238,956	3,398	93.5%	141,426	1,622	1,742	20,185	7,647	12,252	89.7%
17/12					1,510	2,213
18/12	246,789	4,036	93.7%	144,411	1,504	2,482	25,617	11,760	13,443	90.1%
19/12
20/12
21/12
22/12
23/12
24/12
25/12
26/12
27/12
28/12
29/12	341,422	18,221	93.4%	165,595	3,767	11,201	95,548	61,332	19,994	90.1%
30/12
31/12

Corona Virus Daily Stats Hospitalisation Etc – 29 December 2021 – Day 60 of Covid Nearly Normal
Date	Aus New Infection	Aus Hospital	Aus ICU	Aus Ventilate	Vic New Infection	Vic Hospital	Vic ICU	Vic Ventilate	AUS Daily Deaths	Vic Daily Deaths
01/12						299	43	18		5
02/12						288	41	20		10
03/12	1,538	509	71	32	1,189	289	43	22	11	11
04/12					1,349					8
05/12					966					7
06/12	1,281	556	72	24	1,073	310	45	19	4	6
07/12
08/12
09/12
10/12
11/12
12/12
13/12
14/12	2,015	612	102	53	1,189	364	80	44	7	6
15/12
16/12	3,398	670	114	57	1,622	384	87	49	9	9
17/12					1,510				8	7
18/12	4,036	704	110	52	1,504	384	84	43	8	7
19/12
20/12
21/12
22/12
23/12
24/12
25/12
26/12
27/12
28/12
29/12	18,221	1,252	129	52	3,767	397	62	28	8	5
30/12
31/12