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Karen Cutter Profile picture
@KarenCutter4
Nov 10, 2022 • 9 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
The NSW Health epi report for the week ending 5 November was released today.
I feel like I follow NSW reasonably closely, but there were a few surprises in here for me.
#Covid19Aus #Covid19NSW
You can find the full report here...
health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/cov…
Surprise #1: Cases were up 45% this week, with 14,000 cases reported.
While this is still much lower than earlier in the year, it is a lot more cases than the weekly update suggested (the last weekly update was to 3 Nov, had 12,500 cases reported, up 24% on the previous week).
Surprise #2: The number of PCR tests conducted was up a bit (10%), but positivity increased A LOT to 14%. Not good.
By age band, there was a large increase in the 60+ age group. The group that is more likely to test and more likely to report it.
All of that together does not bode well for tomorrow's weekly update.
The number of people in hospital was largely unchanged (+1%)
But hospital admissions were up by about 30% (allowing for late reported admissions, shown as the "unknown" age group in the graph).
The increase was mainly in the 60-79 age group.
There were 24 deaths.
Note there was a change in the way deaths are counted, starting last week. NSW Health only counts deaths once a death certificate is lodged with Births, Deaths, Marriages.
Surprise #3: the big growth in variants of concern was in BA.2.75, specifically the BR.2 sub-lineage. Not BQ.1.1. of XBB.
Not sure if @Mike_Honey_ has anything to add here?
Ends/

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More from @KarenCutter4

Karen Cutter Profile picture
Apr 12
Some fact checking on this article.
TLDR: Australia has not reached a 'significant' COVID milestone
A short thread/
"Australia appears to have had at least a week where no COVID-associated deaths were recorded for the first time in more than two years."
This is simply not true. The statement is based on this Fed Health graph. Image
Yes, it does show a 7-day average of zero deaths for the most recent data points. But this ignores the fact that the graph is compiled using date of death, and it is almost impossible for someone to die, have their death registered, and included in the Fed data within a week! Image
Read 11 tweets
Karen Cutter Profile picture
Apr 5
The Mortality Working Group of the Actuaries Institute has released our estimate of excess mortality for the full year 2023.
TLDR: Excess mortality for 2023 is 5% (95% CI: 3%-7%) or +8,400 deaths.
A thread/
actuaries.digital/2024/04/05/exc…
Note that our expected number of deaths (baseline) is our expectation had the pandemic not happened.
The baseline allows for changes in the age and size composition of the population over time, plus allows for pre-pandemic mortality trend to continue.
We finished the year with deaths being much higher than expected for each of the four weeks in December (as they were in November). Image
Read 15 tweets
Karen Cutter Profile picture
Mar 27
Australian deaths counts: surveillance vs death certificates.
For some time now I have been quizzically looking at the death surveillance reporting, thinking the numbers looked too low.
A thread/
This is because of the relationship between hospitalisations and deaths.
Normally deaths track hospital admissions quite closely, but with a little bit of a lag. But for Dec23 and Jan24, this relationship changed - deaths are lower than expected based on hospitalisations. Image
A few theories were floating around about why (eg. JN.1 less severe), but it also didnt make sense to me from looking at the Vic death reporting, and knowing the Vic wave was a bit earlier than the rest of Aust. Things just werent stacking up nicely.
Read 8 tweets
Karen Cutter Profile picture
Mar 1
The Mortality Working Group* of the Actuaries Institute has estimated Australian excess mortality to 30 November 2023.

A thread/

* re-branded as we plan to look at more than just Covid
Total excess mortality for the first 11 months of 2023 is estimated at 5% (95% confidence interval: 3% to 7%).
This is about 7,400 more deaths than expected if the pandemic had not happened.
This compares to excess mortality for 2022 of 11%.
With only one month of data still to be reported for 2023, we expect that excess mortality for the full year 2023 will be about half the level of 2022.
Read 11 tweets
Karen Cutter Profile picture
Feb 21
The ONS has released a new methodology for calculating excess deaths.
A thread/
First off, I am going to say that this is NOT a conspiracy to hide excess deaths.
This is a government institution doing its best to estimate excess deaths in a sensible way, noting where we are in the pandemic.
Now that we are going into the fifth year post-pandemic, those of us measuring excess mortality are needing to make hard decisions on how to do it.
We are in a difficult phase (measurement wise) as we cant reliably estimate a pre-pandemic baseline (pre-pandemic was ...
Read 13 tweets
Karen Cutter Profile picture
Jan 17
Last week the OECD published this paper on recent mortality trends, including yet another estimate of excess mortality.
How do the OECD results for Australia differ to the Actuaries working group results?
A thread/
oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/78f6…
I'm going to start by saying there is no "right" answer to how to measure excess mortality.
By definition, excess mortality is the difference between actual deaths that occurred in a period, and a predicted number of deaths. And the predicted number is just that - a prediction
Depending on what you are doing, there may be valid reasons for choosing one particular prediction method over another.
In the case of the OECD, they are trying to form estimates for all OECD countries, and so choice of method can become very restricted. This is because...
Read 16 tweets

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