NSW Health were asked why they're not updating Greater Sydney locations at all & revealed they've stopped listing 'low risk' environments like shops. Yet the transmission at a shop in Bondi Junction Westfield was so 'scary' according to Brad Hazzard & how this spread. Not that long ago there was a warning about shopping centre toilets.
The practice of not listing shops etc dates back at least to 23rd July when the Royal Randwick Shopping Centre with 2 CV+ shoppers over several consecutive days was never listed, and finally after intervention by local MP writing to Health did a response come back about no longer listing certain venues.
NSW health started this process of removing previously displayed information - especially about mystery cases and issues with contact tracing, much earlier - July 9th to be precise.
For three days, after Kerry Chant was asked about mystery cases, this detail was provided. Then removed from the daily NSW Coronavirus Statistics release.
When I posted about the NSW Contact Tracing's ability being more myth than reality, some took offence and stated that the figures I provided were wrong - so I published the NSW Health definitions.
Last week a journalist asked me for more detail, which is below.
Over a 2 day period the number of unlinked infection chains of transmission went from 25 to 37. On the July 7th release a total of 26% cases were due to 25 separate 'unidentified' sources. Two days it was later 35%. Of all new Covid cases announced from day to day at that stage - 4 in 5 were from these unlinked chains - then NSW Health stopped producing the information. Today it is in the mid 90% range, or around 19 out of 20 cases.
Have a look at the 11am media briefings in early July - Gladys & Brad kept blaming extended families mixing with one another. The data does not support this.
The number of people linked to each 'unlinked chain' averaged between just two or three people - suggests solely household contacts. Not the 'large families' that Gladys & Brad kept blaming for causing the spread. Quite possible in one or two instances that happened, but clearly not with the then 37 of the 38 chains of infection transmission.
Fast forward to August 17th and the unlinked/unsourced
separate chains of infection now number over 3,200. If just one household contact that would account for 6,400 of 8,654 total CV cases detected. As we regularly hear from Brad Hazzard - close to 100% of household contacts end up positive - implies NSW Contact tracing stopped finding sources for true 'Mystery Cases' in late June.
BTW: You've probably noticed I adjusted the total mystery unlinked separate cases down. Reported as 3,464 yesterday however the 'unknown source' figure mentioned each day is somewhat misleading. It consists of 2 distinct components:
- Cases contacted that day and no source revealed/found - virtually all 'links' since the last week of June have been from people telling the contact tracers that they are household contacts or close contacts of someone already testing positive. CCTV footage viewing is.
- Case yet to be contacted - cases where not yet allocated to a contact group, cases not yet rung, cases rung with no answer.
These numbers are not 'publicly disclosed' but are without it being realised as someone involved pointed out.
The difference between the 2 numbers (323 - 297) = 26 = how many people were contacted by phone, and in many cases, just asked asked a few questions including if they have someone else in their household or a close contact who has tested positive in the last fortnight & answer 'No', have they been in insolation, if so from what date, & how do they feel, shortness of breath etc.
The 297 are the number of people who have
not been spoken with from that days' positive results. They get added to the queue after any remaining cases from prior days. Due to spam, hoax calls & scams - some people don't answer the calls for several days despite receiving the sms telling them to contact NSW Health.
This growing backlog downplays the workload churned through by the contact tracers.
Some tracers are consigned to predominantly trying to contact +ve cases from two or more processing days ago, and most to clearing the backlog from the previous day's processing (the 297). Using yesterday's stats for the work done yesterday - they'd attempted to contact those from 2+ days ago & tried to contact the 297 for the first time + contacted (if similar figures released today Aug 18th) + 129 + 26 = 452 + those finally reached from more than 2 days ago, on a good day that can be another 35 to 40 cases, on a bad day less than 10. So yesterday possibly close to 500 in total if today's number does not change significantly.
There is another calculation that I won't detail that reveals how many of the 'linked cases' announced each day are actually linked to an unlinked mystery case.
NSW Health decided to present the data this way instead of having a separate line showing 'Cases remaining to be contacted/interviewed' as per a directive from the Health Minister's office.
This has the stats people using a reconciliation spreadsheet to produce the daily statistics release among outher output, and occasionally they forget to clear one input box (as was seen a couple of days ago with difference between the total cases figure from one day to the next being much greater than the number of cases declared on the day. This is roughly what they start with.
Aug 17th
452 new cases
S (out of the 129) linked to sourced chain of infection transmission
U (129 - S) linked to unsourced chain of infection transmission
26 unlinked to any source
297 remain to be contacted.
XYZ contacted from previous days' announced cases
A linked to sourced chain of infection transmission
B linked to unsourced chain of infection transmission
C unlinked to any source (new mystery chain)
D remain to be contacted.
Cases added/removed from count, from previous released case numbers (subsequently decided false positives, data entry error etc)
Mystery case linked to a source
Cases unlinked and no longer under investigation
Total Case to date
...and totals for all of the above virtually.
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The results from this are the Daily announced statistics covering new cases, total cases to date etc.
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