Australia's 2nd misfortune - are there any lessons for us?

Melbourne in the Victoria State of Australia has gone into its 2nd lockdown.

We should not be surprised at what is happening in Australia

• In my 30 June post, they were in the bottom 5 countries in terms of wearing masks

• In my 6 July post, I have identified them as a country with a 2nd wave pattern forming

It is very sad as in my 25 June post, they were ranked No 1 by the Global Covid Index (GCI) created by Malaysia.  The GCI scores and ranks 184 countries on how well they are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what happened?

• The govt is looking into the allegation that the source was the security guards at the hotels where the incoming travelers were quarantined

• I have seen an article to say that the Black Lives Matter protest which took place on 6 Jun did not lead to the surge

• The State Health Minister said that 201 cases are believed to be due to community transmission partly blaming families for having big parties, lunches and dinners attended by asymptomatic people

• I saw a report where health officials blamed family gatherings where “hugging and kissing” had occurred against the advice.

If you listen to the news and read in between the lines, the authorities have imposed an “EMCO” on several high rise blocks where foreigners are staying.

Let's see whether we can get any insight by looking at Victoria's mobility index synchronizing it with the number of cases in Australia like what was done for Malaysia in my post yesterday. 

I could not find info on cases just for the State of Victoria for this analysis.  However since the current spike is centred in Victoria, the number of cases (at least over the past 2 to 3 weeks) for Australia should represent what is happening in Victoria.

In the chart

• The red verticle line denotes when Australia declared a state of emergency and had the equivalent MCO

• The blue verticle line denotes when Victoria started to relax its measures

• The purple verticle line denotes 2 weeks before the current spike

I deduced the following from the chart:

• Unlike for Malaysia where there was a sudden change in mobility when the MCO was implemented, it looks as if it took some time after the emergency declaration for the peak "stay-at-home" or the peak "don’t-go-to-work" to be reached. 

• I don’t know enough about Australia to say why this is so.  Maybe the Australian readers can comment

• But even before the relaxation of measures (blue verticle line), people were already moving about – see how the residence and work line started to move back to the Feb levels even before the verticle blue line

Notice the spike in the park and work line in Jun.  This was the holiday for the Queen’s birthday so I can imagine people going to the park or not working.

Incidentally, the Black Lives Matter protest was held 2 days before the Queen’s birthday. 

 

Looking at the chart, all I can say is that the change in mobility is unlikely to be the cause of the current 2nd wave as people were already moving about long before this.

If you accept the logic that the 2nd wave today is due to large numbers of people getting infected about 2 weeks ago, and there was no “Sri Petaling” event, it meant that many small clusters were forming two or more weeks ago.

So around mid-June, some index cases began to infect the community (1st generation) and then at the end of Jun/early Jul, these 1 generation people started to fall sick.

According to Worldodometer, from 13 to 17 Jun, Australia averaged 16 cases a day.  It is not something unusual.   For the past few days, it averaged about 145 per day. 

If you take R0 as between 2 to 3, then the current sick people must have been infected by 48 to 78 people. 

So how did the authorities miss this large number of index cases back then? 

There are several possibilities on why there were no reported spike in cases in mid-June

• The index cases were all symptomatic

• The index cases fell sick but for some reasons they did not seek medical help – could it be that there were foreigners, either illegal (?) or lower social standing

Victoria never had any random sampling of people and just relied on people to report that they are sick.  So if people fell ill and did not seek treatment or were asymptomatic, it would not be detected.

Take the example of the security guards as the index cases.  These guards got infected from those incoming visitors who were under quarantine.

 

So these index cases must have spread it to the 1st generation as there cannot be so many security guards (to be infected) as to cause a shutdown today.

I suspect that today Victoria cases are due to 1st generation infection.  

To come back to my question. How come the Australian govt missed such large index cases?

I think there is an important lesson for us.

• It has to do with incoming travelers

• It has to do with continuous random testing

• It has to do with hugging and kissing 

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PS: This blog is for me to better understand COVID 19 as this will impact my investments. If you are also into equities, follow me at i4value.asia.

Disclaimer:  I am not an epidemiologist, healthcare worker, pharmacist, or staff in the Ministry of Health, but rather is someone with a strong interest in numerical analysis.  The content is an attempt to understand what is happening in the battle against COVID 19 from a data-based perspective. The opinions expressed here are based on information extracted from readily available public sources but I do not warrant its completeness or accuracy and should not be relied on as such.