OPINION: NT Government revising Covid daily tally data

The NT likes to do things differently to the rest of Oz, but should that apply to the basic principals of mathematics? READ THIS OPINION.

TERRITORIANS are known to do things a little differently than the rest of Oz, but the NT government has somehow managed to incorporate the larrikin ‘she’ll be right’ mantra to the universal principles of mathematics.

Nowhere is this uniquely NT spin on statistics more obvious than in the tracking of our pandemic progress.

The NT Government has been repeatedly questioned over its internal vaccination data, health modelling, remote vaccination transparency and now, its daily case tallies.

In an extremely subtle switch to daily case monitoring, the NT Government has started backdating rapid antigen cases to the previous day.

Previously the daily case tally would include all PCR tests processed by the Health department on that day.

With PCR tests taking a few days to be confirmed, this meant that the daily case tally reflected the number of positive tests the NT government was aware of on that day.

However, with the arrival of rapid antigens that statistical measure has been thrown out for a more murky reporting system. For the past few weeks “revisions” to yesterday’s previous tallies have been peppered into the daily Covid briefings.

While Territorians were told they could upload their positive tests within 48 hours, only the 24-hour totals are clearly stated in the daily tallies. The rest are shuffled backwards, inflating yesterday’s tallies but keeping the news of the day running with a smaller daily statistic.

An extraordinary example occurred last Friday. In the blink of an eye, with no fanfare Chief Minister Michael Gunner announced that the previous day’s tally had jumped up by a whopping 302 new cases.

When asked about the backdating of cases two weeks ago, deputy Chief Health Officer Charles Pain said it was a “fair point”.

“Please do (upload results) as soon as possible so it keeps us as close as possible to seeing what the epidemic curve is,” Dr Pain said.

Because of this uniquely NT statistical quirk many of the region’s record breaking daily case tallies are only being announced retrospectively, after being tipped over the line by tricky revisions.

Whenever the Territory Government has been questioned over their unusual Covid statistics. they have responded with a platitude like ‘That’s just how we’ve decided to do things here’.

But to many, this looks like a blatant manipulation of the daily case numbers all the while telling Territorians to take some “personal responsibility” and to stop the “catastrophication” of Covid.

This is not a new phenomenon. Right from the beginning the NT Government declared it would be going it’s own way in recording vaccination data in a system no other jurisdiction in Australia endorsed.

By recording the number of the jabs, and not the address of the patients, the NT vaccination rate was a good 10 per cent higher than the Federal statistics.

These statistics are not just fun facts and titbits of the news cycle. They influence health policies and decision making.

As the school year returns, maybe it’s time for the NT Government to pop into a primary school and to brush up on their basic percentages.

Originally published as OPINION: NT Government revising Covid daily tally data