World leaders
Australia rattled through a series high 25,227 COVID-19 tests over the past 24 hours.
Only one case of community transmission came to light, while current ICU cases fell even further, from 34 to just 29, so Australia's hospitals are all but empty.
New South Wales saw 9 new cases, and Victoria 3.
All of the other states and territories recorded donuts, and recoveries are now far outpacing the tiny numbers of new cases.
Australia now ranks #1 in the world across the sample of OECD countries for bringing COVID-19 under control, with New Zealand in second place.
Source: Shane Oliver, AMP
The methodology here is based upon recovery rates, cases per capita/days since the first confirmed case, the number of active cases per capita, and testing per capita.
Consequently, the borders between Australia and New Zealand may well be opened soon.
Stop press
Of course, it's never trendy to celebrate good news, but when it comes to a global pandemic at least we're all on the same side...or so you'd think!
I've been Tweeting the figures daily over the past few weeks, and by far the most popular Tweets were when there was a big spike in cases in New South Wales (including on one occasion when there was a spike reported in error in the preliminary data).
Weird, but true!
On a related note, here's a weekend prediction for you: the media will be out in force tomorrow trying to take 'gotcha' photos on Bondi Beach and elsewhere with telephoto lenses to 'prove' that Australians have been ignoring social distancing rules.
On what evidence is this prediction based?
Well, this afternoon this media dude was stalking around for ages, desperately trying to find a photo angle to 'prove' how busy the beaches were in the Noosa Shire:
In reality Queensland is regularly reporting zero cases per day of the Coronavirus from a population of 5.1 million.
No wonder trust in some parts of journalism is so low.
Have a great - and appropriately socially distanced - weekend!
