Bondi outbreak outstrips Crossroads Hotel infections 10 days after first case

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size

The Bondi COVID-19 cluster has overtaken the Crossroads Hotel outbreak that came before it, as Greater Sydney prepares to join the eastern suburbs and go into a two-week lockdown from 6pm on Saturday.

As it stands from Saturday’s data provided by covid19data.com.au, which is run by a former Herald journalist, there are 82 COVID cases associated with the Bondi cluster on day 10 (Friday), compared with Crossroads Hotel’s 65.

Avalon’s outbreak – including subsequent outbreaks, such as the Croydon and BWS Berala clusters – had 126 at the same point in time of its outbreak.

Outbreaks compared – now and then

However, the good news is that unlinked cases are much lower than Crossroads at this stage. The bad news is that Sydney is now dealing with the Delta variant of COVID-19, which is more transmissible.

“The transmissibility is at least double previous variants that we’ve seen,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Saturday, referring to expert health advice she’d received. “We’re finding that all household contacts, unfortunately, are getting the virus.”

While the graphs do not provide a prediction or expected trajectory, they do provide context that allows readers to further understand why the state government has decided to take the action it has on Saturday – to lockdown Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast, Wollongong, and Shellharbour for a fortnight.

Under each lockdown, various factors have been at play such as varying degrees of restrictions. The latest lockdown had the least restrictions in place before further restrictions were applied.

The assumptions made in the data are that the Bondi cluster began on June 17 this year, the Crossroads Hotel cluster on July 10, 2020, and the Avalon cluster on December 17, 2020.

The data shows that the Bondi cluster matched the Crossroads Hotel outbreak on Wednesday (day eight; 45 cases) and began to overtake it on day nine (Thursday, 53 v 67). On day 10, Bondi’s caseload began to outstrip Crossroads.

Unlinked cases – now and then

Meanwhile, another graph from covid19data.com.au tracks unlinked cases in all three outbreaks. As you can see below, there are fewer unlinked cases in Bondi’s outbreak compared to the Crossroads cluster.

What’s different about Saturday, though, is that the Premier did not reveal new COVID-19 cases that were recorded between 8pm on Friday and 11am on Saturday like she did for Thursday and Friday. It was these numbers we were able to use in our national news blog on Friday to paint a picture of what day 10 (Friday) was starting to look like in terms of the total COVID-19 caseload NSW Health was dealing with.

Loading

Now we have the full picture of day 10, but we don’t yet know what day 11 (Saturday) is starting to look like.

“The best advice we have from Dr Chant and the health experts is that we should brace ourselves for more cases,” Ms Berejiklian said on Saturday.

“We do need to brace ourselves for a potentially larger number of cases in the following days and that’s why it’s so important that we take action now.”

NSW Health started calling Bondi a cluster in a media release on Saturday, June 19 (seven days ago), but the department’s earliest “monitor for symptoms” exposure warning for all people who visited Bondi Junction Westfield shopping centre was for Friday, June 11 (15 days ago). That timeframe expansion was released about 8.30pm on Friday, June 18.

As of Saturday night, NSW Health listed 224 COVID-19 exposure sites across NSW on its website, which includes public transport routes.

Testing

Encouragingly, COVID-19 testing has also shot up in recent days, but not to levels seen during the Avalon outbreak, but more than during Crossroads’. There were 55,227 tests undertaken on Friday compared to the daily peak of 69,089 during Avalon’s testing blitz and 36,169 during Crossroads Hotel’s.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.