A TikTok comedian’s five-day streak of correctly announcing NSW COVID case numbers has come to an end on Monday, with reports the gentleman was subject to a ‘sting’ operation from NSW Health.
In case you’ve missed it, Jon-Bernard Kairouz has been sharing the NSW case numbers each night at around midnight – around 11 hours before the Premier officially shares the data.
While many have speculated that Kairouz is receiving this privileged information via a leak in NSW Health or the government, the comedian maintains he has been able to calculate the figure each day thanks to “simple maths”.
“My brothers and I have put a lot of time and effort in the algorithm and that’s all it comes down to, just mathematics,” he told The Project last night.
But on Monday morning, Kairouz’s mathematical skills appear to have let him down, after incorrectly predicting there would be 109 new cases. There were 98 new locally acquired cases in NSW.
And if the rumours are to be believed, Kairouz may have been victim to a complex sting operation akin to something from an Agatha Christie novel.
Speaking this morning on The Morning Show, journalist Peter Ford indicated that NSW Health may have shared an incorrect figure internally to try and flush out the leak.
“So there has been a witchhunt on, my information is in the last hour that they set traps for him, and they may have borne fruit. They may have now found the person that it is,” he said.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard quashed claims of a sting operation, however, but did confirm the government was tightening up its practices.
“There was no sting, we are not chasing people but the figures will be distributed on a needs to know basis,” he said.
Kairouz put out a press release of sorts via his social media channels on Monday morning, claiming the NSW government shared today’s number “solely to discredit my mathematical genius”.
