There were apparently errors in the NT's published vaccination rates in the Barkly area.
Thankfully, the error has been picked up and it will be back to the actual raw data for the corrections to be published after being checked, presumably.
While I consider the headline of the relevant article on the ABC News website to be unnecessarily melodramatic, I'll quote the while thing in the interests of exactness.
NT government removes regional COVID-19 vaccine data as Chief Minister admits figures are wrong
The Northern Territory government has removed a key set of public-facing COVID-19 vaccine data from its website after questions were raised about its accuracy.
Before they were deleted, the NT's figures were more than 50 per cent higher than the equivalent federal government data in one region.
The NT figures showed the vast, remote Barkly region surrounding Tennant Creek had reached a first-dose rate of 96 per cent.
However, the most recent federal government figures said just 43 per cent of people in the largely similar area it defines as the Barkly had received a first dose.
Both levels of government use different methods to calculate the rollout, and both have insisted their data is accurate.
But a table showing the NT government's rollout by region was deleted from its coronavirus website following enquiries from the ABC late on Thursday.
The Northern Territory government reported a 96 per cent first-dose rate in the Barkly before this table was deleted.(Supplied: NT Government)
The NT opposition accused the Gunner government of miscalculating its figures with potentially disastrous consequences, given overall regional coverage is a key factor in decision-making about easing restrictions and responding to outbreaks.
For example, high vaccination rates throughout Darwin are the reason why the city is currently under what's been called a lockout, while Katherine is responding to the same outbreak with a hard lockdown.
The government has denied that the deleted dataset was being used to inform policy decisions.
It said part of the reason why the Barkly figures were overblown is that they actually included parts of the Big Rivers region to the north.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner today said the way the count was progressing, the Barkly region was on track to record more than 100 per cent first-dose coverage.
"Obviously that data was wrong. It's removed," he said.
"This goes to some difficulty we've had in how the Commonwealth collates the data and uses the data.
"There is obviously some problems in how this data gets collated — it's one reason why we've tried to be as consistent as possible to use our data and inform our decisions."
The NT government's figures are based on a "jabs in arms" counting method where any vaccine delivered in the NT counts towards its overall coverage rate.
The federal government, meanwhile, tallies the vaccines depending on the Medicare address of the recipient, which could be in another state or territory.
The different methods mean the NT government says 73 per cent of its overall 16-and-over population is currently fully vaccinated, whereas the federal government says about 65 per cent of that population has had both doses.
The NT government has insisted its method is best suited to smaller, more mobile populations.
But Shadow Health Minister Bill Yan said the NT government's method captures tourists, fly-in-fly-out workers and other people who do not permanently live in the NT.
"That could have catastrophic consequences for remote Territorians," he said.
"Some of the numbers out in the bush are really, really low.
"By opening the borders up, having those huge variations in vaccination status could put people in the Barkly at a greater risk than they should be, if the territory is going to base it on their own data rather than the federal data."
Federal government figures released on Wednesday show that only about one in three Indigenous people in the Barkly have received one dose of the vaccine.
That is one of the lowest rates in the federal government's Indigenous population focus areas.
NT figures show the first-dose rates in some remote Barkly communities are currently lower than 20 per cent.
It's so important to use reliable datasets, and to define those with clarity and consistency. However, I acknowledge just how difficult that might be for remote NT communities where population data might be difficult to capture due to the remote and scattered settlements and the swift influx of temporary workers and visitors.
I'm including this entire article (with links to the videos that were taken for this), as even though it's not directly announced or said by a government official, it IS mentioned by our CHO in a tweet, with a link to the article online.
I cannot agree more with the words Critical Care Nurse Lousie Watson has used. It is soul-shattering.
In the ICU where only Maria is vaccinated, others die in disbelief
In the middle of a row of unconscious coronavirus patients, Maria Roessen is a rare and wondrous sight.
The 66-year-old is dressed in a pale blue hospital gown and sitting perched up in a chair in Sunshine Hospital’s intensive care unit under a bubble-shaped plastic hood with monitors attached to her chest and a tube hanging under her nose.
She is weary-eyed, ashen faced and wearing a pair of bright orange and white socks.
“It’s been hell,” she says, pausing to take another deep, wheezy breath. “I thought I was going to my maker.”
As Victorians revel in newfound freedom following the world’s longest lockdown, behind the sealed off doors at the hospital’s COVID-19 ICU unit, the care is relentless.
But healthcare workers here are no longer just fighting a war against coronavirus, they are now battling a never-ending scourge of misinformation about the disease.
Increasingly, the vast majority filling the hospital are severely ill unvaccinated people, some who remain adamant that COVID-19 does not exist even when they are succumbing to the virus.
🎥 VIDEO: Click to watch
Others come to the realisation too late that the deadly virus is real, begging for a vaccine before being hooked up to a ventilator, unsure whether they will regain consciousness.
“It has been incredibly challenging and distressing,” Western Health intensive care director Craig French said.
“Patients and their families have expressed the belief that they don’t have COVID, it’s not real to them, even though they are critically ill or somebody they love is very, very sick.”
On Thursday afternoon, Ms Roessen was the only patient in the coronavirus ICU ward who was well enough to be interviewed when The Sunday Age visited.
She was also the hospital’s first patient to be admitted to the intensive care ward who had been fully vaccinated, something she is certain saved her life.
She suspects it was her “bad lungs” weakened by a previous pulmonary embolism, which left her critically ill, when the virus invaded her body.
🎥 VIDEO: Click to watch
She was taken to hospital by ambulance 10 days ago. Her husband and daughter, both infected with the virus and fully vaccinated, quickly recovered at home.
“If I had not been double vaccinated I would be dead. There are no two ways about it,” Ms Roessen says as a nurse takes her blood pressure.
“It was very scary. The staff here are angels. There are no words for them.”
Western Health treated the most Victorians infected with COVID-19 in the state last year. But the virulent Delta variant has meant staff have treated more coronavirus patients in recent months than the whole of 2020.
And there are more to come, in the order of 1100 COVID-19 patients, who could be in hospital by late December or early January, according to modelling provided by the Burnet Institute.
On Thursday, there were nine critically ill coronavirus patients in Sunshine Hospital’s ICU, most aged between 40 and 60, but the youngest in their 30s.
Another eight critically ill patients were at nearby Footscray Hospital, while almost 50 others filled other coronavirus wards.
A nurse is at the end of each bed in the ICU, dressed in a plastic face shield, pale blue gown and fitted face-mask, carefully observing a computer screen monitoring vitals.
Some patients are ventilated and lying on their bellies as colourful tubes attached to them stretch out to machines humming softly nearby. Others are bare-chested on their backs, beneath a sea of monitors, their feet dangling out the end of the bed.
There is a tiny resuscitation table for newborn babies in the corner of the ward following a surge in pregnant, unvaccinated women being admitted, putting them and their unborn babies in heightened danger of severe outcomes.
The pressure is being felt in every corner of the hospital. Western Health’s critical care outreach service manager, Kylie Fisher, is overseeing the complex daily logistics of managing other seriously ill people.
This involves prioritising only the sickest people for urgent surgeries. Meanwhile, a team of intensive care physicians tend to the seriously ill outside the ICU - something that would have been almost unheard of pre-pandemic.
“They feel like they’ve got their finger in the dike and the moment they move it, the flood could start,” she said. “They are still providing incredible care, but they have been very, very crucial in managing the higher acuity on a general ward.”
Nurses who usually work in operating theatres have been trained up and re-deployed to the COVID-19 ICU.
Among them is critical care nurse Louise Watson, who returned to the ICU six weeks ago. While the senior nurse has cared for countless patients with pneumonia over the years, nothing prepared her for COVID-19. It is the primal and desperate hunger for air that is etched in her mind.
“These people are just so severely depleted of oxygen they are literally gasping for air,” she said.
“They have such panic in their eyes. What we are having to tolerate in terms of oxygen levels that patients are experiencing is something I have never seen before.
“It can be any demographic, any age, if people are unvaccinated, they can get severely ill from COVID.”
Victoria’s Health Department revealed on Friday that 95 percent of those in ICU with COVID-19 were not fully vaccinated.
Professor French said many had chosen not to be vaccinated due to their beliefs. These values are often shared by the patients’ families, making clinical conversations about life-saving treatments extremely difficult.
Some families have expressed a desire to shun conventional medicine, while other families request dangerous and unproven drug treatments they have read about online. Others find it hard to comprehend how much their loved one has deteriorated on FaceTime calls after having not seen them become increasingly sicker in the ICU.
Irrespective of their vaccination status or beliefs about the virus, the professor at the department of critical care at the University of Melbourne said every COVID-19 patient receives the best care possible.
“We do not judge, we just get on with the job,” he said. “I am extremely proud of how hard the staff work every day.”
However, he said the abuse his staff have endured from the families of those severely ill with the disease, who believe the COVID-19 is a conspiracy, has taken a heavy toll. Psychologists have been called in to the ICU weekly to support healthcare workers.
“The level of verbal assault our clinical staff have been exposed to in the last six to eight weeks is something I have never, ever experienced in my career,” the intensive care physician said.
“The misinformation, the belief this isn’t real, the absolute distress they are experiencing when their relatives are critically unwell makes it very, very difficult to have a conversation with them about how we can help them because what they’re requesting is often not consistent with the medical advice.”
But the gratitude of some families remains profound. One recently sent in dozens of kebabs to feed staff who were caring for their loved one.
Despite the challenges, those on the frontline work tirelessly and with military precision. Late Thursday, nurses gently reassured patients as they tended to them, while a crowd of doctors gathered around the nurse’s station carefully examining chest X-rays.
Lungs that look white as bone indicate there are virtually no air-filled spaces for the patient to breathe. This influences treatment, such as proning, which involves up to eight staff turning ventilated patients onto their stomach to open up their airways.
Ms Roessen is hopeful she will be discharged next week. Others will not be so lucky.
“There are members of Melbourne’s western suburbs that are not going home to their families and that is a tragedy we all struggle with,” Professor French said.
“These are people’s mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children.”
“Even if they do survive, they’re never going to be the same again after such a severe critical illness.”
At the end of the ICU ward, a frail man with shrunken cheeks lies in a hospital bed after having his ventilator removed only hours earlier.
He has been in intensive care for weeks. His kidneys are failing and his ribcage protrudes beneath grey-tinged skin. He is restless, like he is in the middle of a bad dream.
“He is improving a little bit every day,” Professor French said. “But he has a very long road ahead.”
