Dear Readers,
The burst of coronavirus in Victoria is now under control. Consecutive daily new infections in the low 200s for days suggest that the spread of the virus is slowing down. The mask policy and the stage 4 lockdown are seen to be effective. However Victorians are far from relief and whether stage 4 lockdown will finish in September 13 is still unknown. The opening up of Melbourne is not under the consideration of Premier Daniel Andrews yet.
“We have numbers in the low 200s, the trend is good. [But] we have to acknowledge that even at that number, even at half that number, if you opened up, you wouldn’t have defeated the second wave — you’d just be beginning the process of a third wave.”, said Premier Daniel Andrews.
Victorians are sensitive to the daily new cases and death numbers. Whenever the number goes up, the hearts of Victorians are down. Yes, daily fluctuations may be caused by many factors and it is the trend that we should be more focussed at. It is clear that there is a downward trend for new cases, but speed is seen to be not fast enough. The current 200’s new daily cases are still seen as too high and unacceptable. The number need to be fall into two digits and even tens before the society can be confident that the virus is suppressed. An opening before that will simply nullify all the hard work done in past months.
The large number of “mystery case” is also disturbing for Victoria. A traceable infection is one which the source of infection has been identified. Every “mystery case” means there is at least one other case out in the community unknown. If a case is found but it’s not known where that person caught it, then it leaves authorities with little way to know how many other people could have been infected by that person because they could have come into contact with any number of people while they were contagious.
In the two weeks from August 4-17, Victoria recorded 767 mystery cases.
When the number of cases goes down, then the nature of those cases (i.e. if the origin is known or unknown) could determine whether things open up.
Please pray that the number of mystery cases will go down together with the number of new infections in Victoria.
Raymond Chow
Publisher, BlessingCALD