YESTERDAY's new NSW peak of 681 cases came as little surprise, given official warnings this week that numbers would continue to worsen.
Based on present trends of spread, Premier Gladys Berejiklian is preparing the state for more than 2000 cases a day.
In NSW, COVID's latest "R number" - its "effective reproduction number" - is 1.3.
This figure has good and bad aspects.
The bad is that 1.3 is above the 1.0 needed to stabilise case numbers.
The good is in analysis reported by the NSW Department of Health's COVID-19 Critical Intelligence Unit, showing studies elsewhere putting Delta's R0 (R nought) number at between 3.2 and 8.0, with a mean figure of 5.0.
R0 indicates how contagious a disease is against an unprotected population.
A NSW figure of 1.3 appears to indicate that the lockdowns, and the state's increasing rates of vaccination, are doing their job in keeping Delta's spread to well below its unchecked levels.
On Tuesday, we thanked Deputy Premier John Barilaro for starting a daily regional NSW briefing in response to calls for more regionally relevant COVID information.
The ability to question the government on regional issues has made it easier for the media to do its job of providing its audiences with locally relevant information.
It's a gesture that has already proved its worth.
This new focus on regional differences may even have helped the government see clear to removing the Central Coast and Shellharbour from the Greater Sydney restrictions.
Next week, Mr Barilaro will likely face questions on the regional NSW travel permit and COVID-test system, starting on Monday as a way of minimising the risk of travelling workers spreading the virus along our highways.
And into our byways, as the cases in far-west Wilcannia unfortunately show.
Even though yesterday's NSW total set another unwanted record, the Hunter's contribution fell to just five cases, an outcome that Hunter New England Health public health physician Dr David Durrheim described as "gratifying".
As the graph at the start of our editorial shows, global deaths are still rising despite the administration of almost 4.8 billion vaccine doses worldwide.
Australia has made mistakes along the way, but no country has handled COVID perfectly. Defeating Delta will take time and determination.
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