Comparison of Sydney and Melbourne Outbreaks - August 30 2021

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

Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 18 August

Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 21 August

Sydney vs Melbourne Outbreaks - 24 August

It doesn't appear as though the additional lockdown measures have had a significant impact on Sydney's mobility as represented by Apple's transit data. It's tracking well above Melbourne 2020's low teens. Significantly, Sydney's hospitalisations have now completely eclipsed those in Melbourne last year. Earlier these posts speculated that there was a political threshold where the government would be compelled into stricter rules and enforcement at a certain level of hospitalisations. If that's true, that level doesn't appear to have been reached. In fact, there has been an announcement of very mild relaxations in the rules, with household or small scale picnics and wedding celebrations with up to 5 people being permitted.

It's possible that the promise of vaccination addressing the high hospitalisations is buying the government more time, politically. There have been reports of some hospitals in Sydney reaching capacity. With rapidly climbing hospitalisations, those reports are bound to become more frequent, but it remains to be seen whether that translates into political pressure or a wider acceptance of stricter lockdowns.

Please see the above posts for additional discussion.

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