Assignment task:
The first case of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Australia was identified on 23 January 2020. Since then, as of 30 June 2020, there have been 7881 confirmed cases and 103 deaths due to the virus, which has increased dramatically to 4.5 million confirmed positive cases and 6058 deaths by March 2022.
Due to early lockdown measures, self-isolation of known cases and close contacts, and quarantine controls of international arrivals, Australia managed to control the virus until 2021. With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2021 and vaccine mandates at several workplaces, more than 95% of Australians aged 16 and over are now fully vaccinated (at least 2 doses). It is believed that with cessation of COVID restrictions in all states, even though the positive COVID-19 case numbers has increased at an alarming rate, the effect of the virus was mild on most of the vaccinated people and the number of deaths is not severe compared to the early days. Our task is to verify the belief using pre- and post-vaccination data.
Data on the number of confirmed positive cases and COVID-19 related deaths by states as at 30 June 2020 and March 2023 are stored in 5COVID.xlsx (Source: Total Cases per 100,000 population - COVID Live dot com dot au/states-and-territories). [Note that June 2020 can be considered as pre-vaccination period and March 2023 can be considered as post-vaccination period with more than 95% of the population fully vaccinated.]
Answer the following questions.
Are the results similar across all states? Hint: Consider the population of each state and comment on the number of cases per 1000 residents in 2020 and 2023