A Guardian Australia analysis of Victorian coronavirus cases shows that infections have been increasing in areas outside the locked-down postcodes, and that all significant growth areas are now contained within the wider Melbourne lockdown.
Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, we calculated the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria.
We then checked to see if cases had increased or decreased over the past fortnight for each area that reported more than five cases during that period.
At the time of writing, a map of the results shows there has been significant growth in regions adjacent to the previously locked-down postcodes, with the largest increase in the Wyndham council area. Wyndham is where the Al Taqwa college is located, the site of what is currently the second-largest cluster of cases in Victoria.
There has also been an increasing number of cases in the Melton and Darebin council areas.
Here’s the full map:
Where Covid-19 cases are increasing and decreasing in Melbourne
Showing the trend in reported cases by local government area, for areas with more than five cases in the past fortnight. The trend is determined using the linear increase or decrease in cases over the past two weeks. The circles are sized by the total number of cases in the past 30 days. Last updated:
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The map also shows areas with a declining number of cases. The City of Casey, while it has a relatively high number of recent cases, has seen a week-on-week decline in case numbers. Other south-eastern areas have seen similar small declines.
The map will be updated daily to track changes in each area over time. This also means that the analysis above will be out of date, but you can see a snapshot of the map at the time of writing here.
When looking at the postcode areas, it’s important to note that these can overlap with multiple local government areas.
Notes
This analysis is based on a daily scrape of LGA data from the DHHS dashboard. To get an idea if cases are increasing or decreasing over the fortnight, I’ve used the slope value from a linear regression of daily new cases over the past 14 days (coronavirus cases do not generally conform to a linear trend, I’m just using it to see the general direction in cases, and this approach was cross-checked with looking at the weekly change in a rolling average, among other approaches). Because case counts can be adjusted retrospectively by DHHS, daily counts can be negative. These are set to zero for the purposes of the linear trend.
Please let me know if there are any issues with the map or data here: [email protected]
