First published at 03:36 UTC on October 14th, 2021.
Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology Dr Catherine Bennett says Victoria’s rise in COVID cases should not be a cause for alarm as the overall average of daily infections plateaus.
A record 2,297 new locally acquired cases were reported in the em…
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Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology Dr Catherine Bennett says Victoria’s rise in COVID cases should not be a cause for alarm as the overall average of daily infections plateaus.
A record 2,297 new locally acquired cases were reported in the embattled state overnight, smashing its previous peak of 1,942 infections on October 8.
“That’s the trouble with daily counts, they can jump around depending on which cases are followed up and how many contacts they have, so you can discover an outbreak within those daily numbers,” said Dr Bennett.
“So, I don’t think we should be alarmed, the average number over the last three days is more important than today’s number itself and that is still tracking, not just with the rise that we’ve seen lately, this is actually looking a bit like we are seeing that plateau.
“So hopefully people will not be put off by today’s numbers, watch what happens over the rest of the week but hopefully we will see this continual trend to a flattening so we might see high numbers tomorrow.
“They might drop the next day but as long as the overall average stays where it’s been, which has been 1,800 cases, then we should start to see this turnaround as well so that’s what we’re hoping.
“This is just one of those spikes we do see, we saw it in Sydney when they were plateauing, it had a high day, maybe two and then it would come back down again so that’s the message: watch the longer term trend.”
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