Comparison of Sydney and Melbourne Outbreaks

This is an update to these posts: Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 30 July

Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 4 August

Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 12 August

Please see the above posts for additional discussion.

The key in this chart is that, unfortunately, Sydney's mobility is remaining unchanged at a higher level than Melbourne's at its trough last year. Apple's data only goes up to Monday, so it's possible that the tighter lockdown's (wider range and more stringent enforcement) effects had not appeared by then. In the next few days we should have a true measure of the effect of the tightening, but, so far, it appears that Sydney continues to move around at the same level. This means that it is wholly reliant on vaccination to bring down its rate of infections from its current level.

If this persists, there will be a battle between the reductions due to vaccination and increases due to difficulties of testing, tracking, isolating and quarantining in a population with higher rates of infection. While these are highly effective with smaller case numbers, as we have seen, larger case numbers tend to swamp the measures. Tests take longer to report, contact tracing falls further behind, and therefore numbers of infectious people in the community go up.

About These Images The chart is based on data from Apple's mobility dataset.