The state government is in danger of losing control of this Delta wave yet we’re getting less information when transparency should be the top priority The headline figure that New South Wales had reported a record 633 new Covid cases obscured some other truly terrible statistics in the latest press conference by the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian. These reveal some alarming trends. The first of these was the revelation that the current reproduction number of the virus, its R factor, is 1.3 – well over the rate of 1.0 which is needed to stabilise case numbers.
At present, each positive person is infecting 1.3 others. That means numbers will inevitably get worse – potentially a lot worse – and that NSW is in danger of completely losing control of this Delta wave. The second troubling statistic revealed on Wednesday suggests NSW’s much-vaunted “gold standard” contact tracing system is under severe strain. Only one-quarter of the new cases were immediately linked to previous cases: 145 were household contacts and 13 were close contacts. The source of infection for 475 cases was still under investigation.
That means we are flying blind, possibly for days, regarding where and how the virus is transmitting. A third set of scary numbers suggests testing and outreach are slowing down under the weight of this outbreak, which started in mid-June. There were 102,749 Covid tests in the latest 24-hour period compared with the previous day’s total of 151,767 tests. Generally, testing in NSW has been running at about 150,000 to 160,000 tests a day, turbo-charged in recent weeks by the requirement that authorised workers leaving hotspot local government areas be tested every three days.
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