Nothing to do with a difference in ethnic mix I would not think, except in the sense I suspect some migrant groups are more likely to work cash in hand and you might find their family members are very reluctant to get tested even when they suspect covid, because they don't want the rest of their family to have to isolate and miss out on work.
But that applies in Melbourne too.
Unfortunately the virus is spreading more in a lot of the poorer migrant communities in both Sydney and Melbourne.
I think though the main difference in death numbers is for the same reason last year-why did Melbourne have most of the deaths in 2020? Because that's where most of the covid numbers were.
Now fast forward to Sydney 2021. A few weeks back, NSW was getting upwards of 1300 new covid cases a day. In fact, numbers went right past 1500 on 4th Sept.
At that time, Melbourne was only getting numbers in the 200s.
People don't usually die on day 1 of the illness. They often die about 3 weeks in. So right about now, you'd be expecting NSW to be reaping the results of the high numbers back at the start of the month.
In Vic, we would probably be seeing deaths based more on those 200 numbers. Logically, you'd expect them to be about 7 times less than in NSW.
But... the Vic numbers of new covid cases started to rise rapidly from 13 Sept onwards, while NSW cases have overall been falling since 24 Sept. Yesterday our numbers overtook NSW. I don't know if our numbers have yet reached their peak either.
So what you should see in a few weeks is Vic death numbers creeping closer to NSW totals and if we keep getting more new cases than NSW, it will eventually pass them.
Death numbers always lag behind the daily new cases numbers.
