Thread by @KarenCutter4

The NSW Health epi report for the week ending 26 Nov is now out.
A thread, where I get cranky (again)/
#Covid19Aus #Covid19NSW
You can find the full report here...
health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/cov…

Cases up 19% in the week. As mandatory reporting of RATs was discontinued on 14 Oct, cases since then are not comparable to the earlier timeseries

Here are cases split between PCR and RATs. A rough estimate is that if RATs were still mandatory, we'd be pushing around 50,000 cases this week (rather than 33,000). (@dbRaevn usually does a more accurate estimate, utilising the info by age band.)

The number of PCR tests conducted is up by almost 10%, and the positivity rate has also climbed to almost 20%. This is the highest it's been since I started recording it (although positivity was much higher in Jan). Not good.

By age band, all went up by between 15% and 25%

Here's where I get cranky. Hospital admissions.

For anyone who missed it, here is a thread I did a couple of weeks ago on this issue.

The very first statement in the NSW Health report, at the very beginning of their summary, it says "While hospitalisations and ICU admissions decreased this week, there were ..."
This statement is simply not true.
Hospital admissions DID NOT DECREASE.

NSW Health compared the daily average of 87 admissions this week (BEFORE late reported admissions), to the 89 from last week (AFTER late reported admissions).
(I estimated last week that the 73 would grow to 88 with late reports. Off by 1.)
Admissions have gone up by 19%.

The number of people in hospital grew by 18%, very consistent with the increase in admissions if you measure it properly.

The reason why this bugs me so much is because it is just so obviously incorrect.
There are enough people saying that govt are trying to hide figures from us, and things like this just add fuel to the fire.
(ok, so maybe me pointing it out also doesnt help...)
Moving on.

25 deaths this week.
With the change to reporting on registered deaths only via BDM, any signals on increased numbers of deaths will be slow to come through.

Not much of an update on the variant picture this week (they didnt add a new week, but some figures have been revised slightly following additional sequencing). So this picture is almost 2 weeks old.
- BQ.1.1 = 18%
- BA.5 = 25%
- BR.2 = 25%
- BA.2.75 = 20%.
ends/