COVID-19 / Coronavirus

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Victoria has recorded 30 new cases of COVID-19, Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Annaliese van Diemen announced on Friday morning, when she also revealed some people in hotel quarantine and Melbourne's hot-spot suburbs were declining coronavirus tests.

Dr van Diemen said about 30 per cent of returned international travellers were not agreeing to the tests, and health workers going door-to-door in affected suburbs were also reporting that a minority of people were declining to be tested.
 
MightyHawks said:
Victoria has recorded 30 new cases of COVID-19, Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Annaliese van Diemen announced on Friday morning, when she also revealed some people in hotel quarantine and Melbourne's hot-spot suburbs were declining coronavirus tests.

Dr van Diemen said about 30 per cent of returned international travellers were not agreeing to the tests, and health workers going door-to-door in affected suburbs were also reporting that a minority of people were declining to be tested.
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That is ridiculous.
 

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Brishawk said:
That is ridiculous.
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Given some of the what appear to be false stories and videos about the testing floating around, if they aren't sick I can understand them not wanting the swab test, they might think it's going to be a lot more horrible than the reality

Pessimistic said:
Let them walk after 2 negative tests. Are some people liking being in the hotels?
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can't let them out too early people can test negative during the incubation period

14 days seems to be the 99% of cases point, there have been a couple that tested positive later

I wouldn't be rushing to let people out a week early or anything. It's a choice to get on a plane and come here, they can deal with the two weeks in the hotel
 
Gralin said:
Given some of the what appear to be false stories and videos about the testing floating around, if they aren't sick I can understand them not wanting the swab test, they might think it's going to be a lot more horrible than the reality


can't let them out too early people can test negative during the incubation period

14 days seems to be the 99% of cases point, there have been a couple that tested positive later

I wouldn't be rushing to let people out a week early or anything. It's a choice to get on a plane and come here, they can deal with the two weeks in the hotel
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I bet they didn't expect their guards to be infected either. meester hart whatta mess!!!
 
Brishawk said:
I don’t understand why they aren’t compelling people to take the test.

by the same token, I wonder how many of the 5,400 came during the period in which testing kit availability was much more limited.
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Can they currently legally force someone to take the test?
I'd be surprised if they could TBH
 
Gralin said:
Can they currently legally force someone to take the test?
I'd be surprised if they could TBH
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Murphy says the states could have enforced it, but it's now mandatory

30% of people refusing to take a test is ridiculous
 
MightyHawks said:
Murphy says the states could have enforced it, but it's now mandatory

30% of people refusing to take a test is ridiculous
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It's easy to say they can enforce it but given what's involved I wonder if it would hold up if challenged in court.

Does it count as a medical procedure?

I agree 30% is high but we don't know who was administering, how they asked, who refused etc
 
Gralin said:
It's easy to say they can enforce it but given what's involved I wonder if it would hold up if challenged in court.

Does it count as a medical procedure?

I agree 30% is high but we don't know who was administering, how they asked, who refused etc
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If it means they stay in quarantine until the court case is complete then no one is going to fight it.
 

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Murphy said they already had the power to do it
 
Just make them sign a consent form before they are allowed to get on the plane to escape the virus

I wonder if the figures include the first lot of Australian skiiers in Aspen who wouldnt allow the US authorities to test them even though they had it
They then flew back to Melbourne and played golf

It seems that even people in effected areas are refusing tests when they get the door knock
 
phlogiston said:
Hesitate to wade in to this, but here goes.

It strikes me that there are four factors in Victoria that people believe are leading to growth in numbers (this is based on what I've heard; happy to accept there could be more):
  1. Large family gatherings
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels
  3. BLM rally
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public.
Examining each in turn:
  1. Large family gatherings. From what I have heard, these families have a large proporertion of people who do not speak or read English very well (or at all). The DHHS here in Vic has been translating the warning messages into other languages, but it ends up these translations were buried a 3-4 clicks into the DHHS website. My understanding is that this situation has now been rectified, with non-English translations more easily accessible.
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels. Anecdotal evidence suggests that staff are either inadequately trained or failing to follow the training provided. This seems to be an issue with execution rather than policy, as other states have quarantine hotels and are not having this same issue. Presumably the solution is to replace existing security staff with medical staff with better training / observance of training, but I don't have enough insight into the execution of this policy to make any more than this relatively uninformed observation.
  3. BLM rally. It's been over two weeks now, and no spike in cases attributed to people catching it at the rally. Last number I heard was that there were three people known to be at the rally with the virus (down from four), but timing and testing has confirmed that all three had it prior, and none of the many cases coming forward in the subsequent fortnight demonstrate that it was caught there. The guy behind the H&M Northland cluster was originally thought to have caught it at BLM, but they have now confirmed based on timing and viral load that he caught if a few days after the rally. In addition, we've got a really nice controlled experiment here: BLM rallies were held in several capital cities, and no other state is experiencing a rise in cases. Suggests that BLM rallies therefore are not a direct vector for transmissions. What message holding these rallies sends to people about controls is another matter, which leads us onto...
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public. I was at my local supermarket the other day, and loitered near the entrance (well away from other people). It has one of those hands-free sanitizing stations. I waited until 20 people had passed the entrance; only one bothered to use the sanitizing station. If this tiny little experiment is in any way indicative, then... and I posted my observations to social media. I don't think I've ever had a post which has gathered more comments. Pretty evenly split: 50% saying, yeah, pretty poor, 50% calling me judgemental or calling out reasons why people may not use sanitizer (ranging from completely reasonable (I have a skin condition and using high vol alcohol sanitizer causes medical issues) through to perhaps less so (I find some of them a bit slimy so don't use them)). I would have had a more peaceful life had I posted a poll: "Lindy Chamberlain: guilty or not?"
    There's also a bit of cargo cult mentality. Rode bikes into town to pick up some shoes for Mr 14 on the weekend. People ignoring the marks on the floor for queuing outside the shop, and the guy running the queue said, "We're only allowed 20 people in at one time". Yep, the shop looked about 80 sq m, that makes sense. Except all 20 people were squeezed into one corner where the seats were to try on shoes. Actually, the shop may be 80 sq m, but the usable area is closer to 20 sq m. Not the fault of the dude following instructions on the door, but a little more analysis would be helpful.
    Chatting with a colleague who lives and works in Sydney today, she reported basically the same behaviour there. "It's just like October last year, really". Again, if this behaviour is happening in Sydney and Melbourne, and only Melbourne is spiking, it does suggest the correlation is lower than other causes. Still skating on thin ice IMHO.
    Today's Coronoacast podcast cited some research showing in April (I think) 80% of people were complying with physical distancing measures. When the group running the survey ran it again last weekend, the number was 25%. I'm not sure if this was just Victoria, or measurements across the country.
Anyway, that's all a long-winded way of saying to my mind the evidence does not suggest BLM rallies as a direct link to spike in Vic, but may have sent poor signals to people re controls. I read somewhere yesterday (sorry, looked for the source but couldn't find it) over 80% of current active cases (for Tuesday) in Vic can be traced back to one of the family gatherings or the hotel quarantine; but I do worry that #4 may lead to more cases in future.

Edited to add: I'm not sure that the current use of hyperbolic language is helping any. City of Darebin is a "hotspot" apparently. Latest figures I can find is 4 infections out of a population of 160,000. That's 0.0025% and it qualifies as a "hotspot"? Nearly as bad as the cybersecurity guff spewing from the PM's mouth last Friday (I work in the industry, and no one outside the NSW gov who had a slight uptick in attacks has any idea what he was on about).

Sorry for the long post, but thought it may add to the discussion in a constructive way.

Cheers,
P
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Stop making sense. I totally forgot I was in big footy for a moment there.
 
If Victoria is just planning to flatten the curve then this leakage from overseas doesn't matter

If we are looking to eradicate the virus like the rest of the country and NZ have almost done then this leakage is ridiculous

It doesn't make sense to me that we are likely to have a hard border between Victoria and the rest of Au/NZ because we aren't making people have a test / keeping them in quarantine til they do

SA have had two full planes from India arrive this weekend. Don't think SA will just let 30% of them wander back into the community without a test.
 
I live right near one of the 'hot spot' suburbs and areas.

Could have told them 4 weeks ago there would be a 'spike' , 'increase' whatever you want to call it in the area.
People weren't doing the right thing then and more than likely still aren't.

I work in essential service and so does my wife, both medical field . A lot of people just don't get it . I don't know what the answer is tbh and I'm not even sure there is one.
 
NSW have today announced they will make testing in quarantine mandatory.
Which only covers return travelers that are kept in hotels for two weeks anyway unless they get really sick.
 

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