Melbourne LGA Covid Analytics

OK, I am bored, at home, in lockdown in Melbourne!

Rather than watching TV each night, I thought I would brush up on my analytics skills. I value charts that show how COVID cases are changing per day, by location, showing whether countries (or cities) are flattening the curve.

I thought I would create one by Local Government Area for Melbourne:

Here I only show a handful of local government areas, but you can view in Tableau Public and configure the chart to your liking. The chart shows, on the y axis (log scale), total cumulative cases (not just active) since the middle of June (a time when Melbourne had 40 odd active cases .. we now have 5000). The x axis displays the nubmer of days since the 10th case (from mid June) in that LGA.

It is fascinating that some LGAs had a strong peak, and are now flattening the curve (e.g. Moonee Valley), while others are only now taking off (like Geelong and Yarra Ranges). What is also interesting is that some LGAs went from approximately ten (active) to nearly a thousand cases in the space of a month and a half (scary!).

I notice the Health department has today released data by postcode, but only a snapshot of active cases today. That is a good thing. The greater the visibility of key hotspot areas, the greater residents can hopefully double down and focus on minimising spread.

Just a disclaimer - this is me just playing around with data to learn new skills (like Tableau). I have pulled the data together from Vic Health, but it took a fair bit of manual manipulation (i.e. the data was not in a nice clean format to start with).

Hopefully you find these insights useful. Stay safe.

George Panas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Management at Monash University. His PhD explores how consumers consider convenience and waste in online grocery decisions. Prior to commencing his PhD, George held senior industry supply chain roles, including Head of Supply Chain at Coles Group Asia and Head of Finance for Coles Online.