Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.
Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.
Guardian Australia has gone through every state and territory press release to construct and maintain an up-to-date database of coronavirus cases, as well as maintaining live data feeds from other groups collating data, such as Johns Hopkins University.
This is necessary to get a broader picture of how Covid-19 is affecting Australians and to track the impact of government measures.
National view
This chart shows the “epidemic curve†for Australia with a timeline of measures introduced by the federal government. It aims to track our progress in “flattening the curveâ€, and the measures we have introduced to do so.
According to experts, the growth in new coronavirus cases in Australia is slowing, likely due to the decrease in travel-related cases. However there is still a long way to go in controlling the spread of Covid-19, and particular attention needs to be paid to the rate of community transmission.
The following chart shows the percent growth in cases, with a trend line based on a five-day average. Generally, we want both lines to be heading downwards towards zero:
Here, you can see the cumulative total of confirmed cases, with the contribution of each state and territory:
State and territory breakdowns
Here is the daily count of confirmed cases – the epidemic curve – for each state and territory. The most recent day will usually be an incomplete total:
This table has the number of deaths for each state and territory, as well as the number of patients requiring hospital treatment. It also includes the number of patients currently in intensive care, or requiring ventilators.
Source of infections
This chart shows the daily new case count by the source of infection to compare overseas v local cases. It’s important to also note that a large number of cases are under investigation at any point in time, and so these figures can change retrospectively with further updates.
Maps of confirmed cases in four states
Only four states are currently reporting cases by location – NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
Here’s the geographic distribution of cases within New South Wales. The map shows the outbreak is concentrated in metropolitan Sydney, in areas with dense populations and large numbers of overseas travellers.
And here’s the map showing location of cases in Victoria. Again, most cases are clustered around the cities:
And here’s the map for Queensland, mapped by hospital and health service regions:
The Western Australian health department has recently started releasing location data, now allowing us to map WA cases:
Testing rates
Here, you can see the testing rate per million people for each state and territory:
You can see an earlier rough comparison of these rates with other countries here.
International comparisons
This chart uses a log scale and re-indexes the time to the first day since cases were above 50 to make the trajectory of the pandemic in selected countries directly comparable:
This chart uses a similar view to compare the trend in deaths for the same countries:
Updates
29 April 2020:
- Added chart showing source of infection for new daily cases
About the data
This database is available for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU) licence, which means it is OK to re-use, but please provide attribution and a link to Guardian Australia. The data is available in Google sheets here or as a JSON feed here.
We assign cases to the date on which they were reported by the given health department, and deaths are assigned to the date they occurred. Extended data on testing and demographics varies between each state and territory so may not always be available. Please contact nick.evershed@theguardian.com if you spot an error in the data or to make a suggestion.
Due to the nature of collating data daily under time pressure and differences in how data is collected, we recommend cross-checking with other data sources where possible. It is quite likely these figures will vary from other figures due to differences in data collection methods.
Here are a few other websites doing similar work:
- Due to the unprecedented and ongoing nature of the coronavirus outbreak, this article is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects the current situation at the date of publication. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy.
