Thread by @juliette_io

Thread. (Warning: this goes into the weeds but see 3, 5, 8 for key takeaways).
1/10
Confusion today about NSW #COVID_19 numbers. Here's why🧐. What they announced in the last 48 hours:
- Thurs 19 March: media release. "As at 11am today”. +40 cases, total 307.
#covid19australia

2/10
- Fri 20 March: press conference w/ Brad Hazzard, Dr Kerry Chant at 1pm. +75 cases, total 382. (citation @SMH live blog).
- Fri 20 March: media release. “As at 8pm today”. +46 cases, total 353 🤔
- Sat 21 March: media release. “As at 8pm today”. +83 cases, total 436.

3/10
So for some reason, NSW Health has reported an extra 29 cases today, that the minister had already reported y’day.

This led to covid19data.com.au briefly showing more cases than the official total. This has been corrected to match NSW Health's total figure.

4/10
I get that NSW Health needs to cut the numbers off somewhere, and it’s a changing situation. And I think part of the confusion has come out of the fact that on Thursday they changed from ‘as at 11am’ to 8pm.

But why does this confusion matter?

5/10
1. First, over the last 2 days, NSW has announced a bulk of new cases twice. Citizens of NSW heard 75 on Friday and 83 on Saturday. This is incorrect and inflating figures the public hears.

6/10
2. We were trying to keep track of day-on-day increases. covid19data.com.au has to track cases by the dates they’re announced (usually the day after they were confirmed).

7/10
In order to reflect what the NSW Health website says, I've had to reduce the case count for Friday 20 March to 46, and put the case count for Saturday 21 March to 83. That means my ‘number of new cases each day’ charts have changed and NSW figures for Fri March 20 reduced.

8/10
The NSW figures for today clearly reflect an artificial increase. Media reported the biggest day on day increases both yday AND today. That is not correct.

9/10
3. Finally, this also demonstrates the importance of news websites leaving their live blogs accessible after the day. With such a rapidly developing story that will not stop, live blogs are the information sources of record. smh.com.au/national/coron…

10/10
Thankfully @smh closes its live blog each day and leaves it online so I could check that I wasn't going crazy. 🤯 I believe the @ABC sets a redirect, so we can't access previous days. (Please correct me if I’m wrong). It would be better to leave it live.

covid19data.com.au