At long last, Victoria is starting to see some consistently lower coronavirus case numbers on a daily basis.
There have been five straight days with under 300 new cases, and while that's still hundreds more than the daily tallies of other states and territories, it's a decided improvement on the 520-plus Victoria averaged through the first five days of the month.
Naturally, with such strict restrictions on so much of the state, the optimists among us are looking ahead to what it could mean for the lockdown if the numbers keep coming down.
Could it bring an early end to the stage 3 and stage 4 measures in place?
Premier Daniel Andrews doesn't want to start talking about opening back up for a few reasons.
Fears of a third wave
Early in the pandemic, when people were asking if we could start easing restrictions shortly after they were imposed, the parachute analogy was used.
You jump out of a plane and start plummeting towards the ground. Then you open your parachute and the speed of your descent slows rapidly. But you don't then get rid of the parachute.
In this case, the social distancing, stay-at-home orders, curfew and everything else the statewide restrictions entail are the parachute and the case numbers are your velocity. Slowing, but far from zero and hanging by a few strings.
The current state of play is supposed to remain until September 13 at the earliest, but the Premier was asked if there was any chance some restrictions could be lifted earlier in light of some relatively promising numbers.
He pointed out that the state was in its third of at least six weeks of the harsh restrictions and it was simply too hard to forecast even a week ahead, but that they would keep taking experts' advice.
"It's absolutely fine for us to be having these discussions, it is just hard to crystal ball where we might get to," he said.
"We've just got to accept, as tough as it is, that we've still got a long way to go in this and we have to keep doing everything we possibly can to drive those numbers down and down further.
"Then there'll be a time where we can say, 'Yes, we're past this. Now let's have a proper discussion about what's a proportionate easing'. Then debates will start again about whether you're opening up too fast or too slow. That will be a great day … but we have to stay the course.
Drop in testing numbers
Daily testing numbers in Victoria have been consistently sitting above 20,000, until this week.
But after a few days in the 15,000 to 18,000 range, Victoria's authorities were happy to see the figure back up above 20,000 on Thursday, urging people to keep getting the swab.
As Donald Trump has told us, if you test more you're going to find more cases. But even if you don't find them, those cases can still be out there.
Fortunately, Victoria's proportion of positive results to tests conducted is pretty good — around 1 per cent.
Mr Andrews said if that percentage was higher — one out of every 10 was the example he used — "then we'd be worried that there's an iceberg that we're missing".
But they will want to see a few more big testing days going forward to make sure they aren't missing too many cases.
Still too many mystery cases
Not all numbers are created equal, and a coronavirus case where the origin is known is far less disturbing than a "mystery case".
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.
As the Premier said: "In general, a mystery case means that there's at least one other [case] out there, so I would be happier not to have any of those."
So, even if the raw number of daily cases gets nice and low, the nature of those cases (i.e. if the origin is known or unknown) could determine whether things open up.
The good news is, as the numbers get smaller, it becomes easier for the coronavirus cops to "drill down very carefully into the data to see where they might have got it", which will make opening up safer and therefore more likely.
No identifiable trend downwards in case numbers
We have had a few false dawns during the second wave, seemingly more out of wishful thinking than anything else.
Whenever the current day's numbers would turn out to be lower than the previous day's, people would start asking about downward trends and getting on top of the outbreak.
Mr Andrews wants to look at the week-on-week averages to determine a trend, and there isn't quite enough data yet because Melbourne's stage 4 restrictions haven't even been in place for three weeks yet (they started on August 2).
And while looking at graphs of case numbers you can see a vague downward trend, as the Premier said, it's not happening all that quickly, "and not in a way that you could really call a trend just yet".
But at the end of the day, yesterday's announcement of 240 new cases was actually more than both of the previous two days, despite being on the end of a general downward slide.
"I think what's important is actually the new case numbers. There are still 240 today. So those numbers are still too high. But they're not 700, which they were a couple of weeks ago," Mr Andrews said.
"So they are coming down, they're going in the right direction. We're not looking for single-day figures, but a trend over time, and that trend is coming down.
"It can change day to day. That's why the weekly trends are much more valuable to us."
Trying to clear active cases
There are almost 5,000 active cases in Victoria and, despite that being a drop of more than 2,000 from the previous day, bringing those numbers down is not a fast process.
To be cleared, someone who has tested positive needs to go through a process called "release from isolation", which is different to the 14 days of quarantine we've all heard so much about.
The 14-day quarantine is for people who are known contacts of someone who has tested positive or are at high risk of having been infected by a known case. So that person goes into quarantine for 14 days because that's how long it takes for symptoms to show up if you have been infected.
The "release from isolation" process goes like this: a person tests positive, that person is ordered to go into isolation, they stay there for at least 10 days, they are allowed out once the public health team clears them.
Part of getting the all-clear includes trained health professionals from Health Direct interviewing the person who tested positive to make sure they've recovered and are allowed to get out of isolation.
Obviously Health Direct staff did not clear 2,000-plus cases in a day, so there is also a clerical element to when we find out these numbers, making it a lengthy process that could push out the restrictions' end date even further.
If someone is asymptomatic after the 10 days and not in a high-risk group, this releasing/clearing process DOES NOT involve getting another test. The isolation could be longer if the person has symptoms and they will be in regular contact with the public health team.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMib2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA4LTIxL3ZpY3Rvcmlhcy1jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy1sb2NrZG93bi1pcy11bmxpa2VseS10by1lbmQtYW55LXRpbWUtc29vbi8xMjU3OTMzMtIBJ2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMjU3OTMzMg?oc=5
2020-08-20 19:19:00Z
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