A new case of COVID and five new clots
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What is the latest update on the Sydney community COVID‑19 case and its contacts?
This is an ABC podcast. Hello, this is Coronacast, a daily podcast all about the coronavirus. I'm health reporter and host of the Patient Zero podcast, Olivia Willis.
I'm physician and journalist, Dr Norman Swan. It's Friday, the 7th of May, 2021. Nice to have you back again, Liv.
Thanks, Norman. It's good to be here. Happy to be keeping the seat warm for Teagues. Now, yesterday we discussed the case of the Sydney man who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday. And it's the first case of community transmission that we've had in New South Wales in some time. So since then, at the time of recording, we've got one additional case. That's the man's wife. She tested positive also on Wednesday. He has nine other close contacts who have been tested. They're all negative, which is good news. Now, interestingly, the man's wife, we talked about yesterday how the man himself had low CT values, I believe. She has high CT values. Just remind us of what that means.
So the CT value is really a reflection of the infectiousness of the virus. To be crude about it, it's more complicated than that. And the high CT, so paradoxically, a low CT means more infectious. And it means that you're really in the prime of the infection. And a high CT can mean either you're late in the infection or early in the infection. It's not yet super infectious. And it turns out that the partner is probably early in the infection. I think they were saying yesterday that they would expect the CT value to go down in his partner and to become more infectious. In other words, they've caught this before it becomes much more infectious.
Okay, well, that's good news. And the other kind of key finding yesterday was the results of the genomic testing.
How do CT values indicate how infectious a COVID‑19 patient is?
So that's located the original source of the infection in an overseas case, a traveller who was staying at the Park Royal Hotel in Darling Harbour. The sequencing shows he tested positive for COVID-19 on day one of quarantine, was moved to a different facility.
And had come in from the United States.
Had come in from the United States. And I guess the key issue here is we don't know the missing link between the traveler and the man in Sydney.
That's right. So, but it does give them a timeframe, which is relatively short from the end of April, end-ish of April. flew to now and the contact tracers have really got to find where this link is because there's somebody out there who's been spreading the virus. So there were opportunities here where the person came in, they were tested, they got transferred, presumably they went on a bus, other people handling them. The opportunities for spread are quite considerable. They're looking at CCT footage and maybe later on today we'll find out more about that. But the potential here is that there's somebody out there spreading the virus without knowing it.
Right. So the risk lies in that kind of journey of transportation, probably from the hotel to this other facility.
There's two things you've got to do in contact tracing. One is, which is the obvious one to start off with, which is who have you come in contact with? Where have you been finding out your contacts there? But with this virus, because it spreads in clusters, you've got to find the cluster or whether there was a cluster from which this person found it that you don't know about. So you've got to go back in time as far as you need to. The good thing here is you don't have to go too far back in time because you know exactly when this person arrived in Australia. So there's a few days where you've just got to find out how long this virus has been circulating in the community. as a note of reassurance here as well, is that 80% of people who are infected don't spread.
But that doesn't apply here. Somebody has spread already, and this person has spread in a domestic situation. So this is a situation where this virus is spreading, and they're going to have to find out where it came from.
The variant that was detected is the B.1.6172 variant. Norman, what do we know about this?
So this is the variant that appeared in Maharashtra province or state in India back in, I think it was October late 2020.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the latest update on the Sydney community COVID‑19 case and its contacts?
0:00–1:36
2
How do CT values indicate how infectious a COVID‑19 patient is?
1:36–3:59
3
What did genomic testing reveal about the source of the Sydney outbreak?
3:59–6:34
4
Which COVID‑19 variant was identified in Sydney and why is it concerning?
6:34–8:21
5
How many additional blood‑clot cases have been linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia?
8:21–9:56
6
What is the estimated risk of developing a clot after the AstraZeneca vaccine for people over 50?
9:56–10:23
7
What are the current treatment guidelines for vaccine‑associated clotting events?
10:23–10:29