Leading epidemiologist calls for greater ‘transparency’ over COVID-19 data

One of Australia’s most experienced epidemiologists has called for greater transparency from the government about COVID-19 numbers.

Professor John Mathews, who used to work for the Commonwealth Health Department and worked on various pandemics, told Neil Mitchell it was hard to know exactly how Australia, and specifically Victoria, was tracking in suppressing the coronavirus.

“It’s difficult in terms of the way the government releases this information to know precisely what is going on,” he said.

“The government has not been transparent about the way it’s treating the data and hasn’t been transparent about the actual data being collected.

“For example, we’d like to know, of the positives, how many came from people who had symptoms, how many came from people who didn’t have symptoms, but were contacts and how many of them came from people who just turned up to be tested because they were generally concerned.

“If we had that kind of information, it’d be much easier to interpret what’s going on.”

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