Health system in Sydney is under pressure as COVID-19 infections hit a daily record on Wednesday. Almost 80 per cent of the Sydney available intensive care beds are now full, of which 17 per cent are coronavirus patients. Coronavirus patients in Sydney’s hotspots will be triaged in makeshift units at Westmead and Blacktown hospitals to free up ambulances after paramedics were told to redirect some COVID patients as far as the north shore. On Thursday Westmead will open short-stay units in the emergency department to manage surging case numbers, after the hospital last week saw 280 COVID-19 patients delivered by ambulance, triggering the hospital’s “code-yellow” alert.
Despite two months of lockdowns in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW) state reported 919 new cases amid a growing Delta variant outbreak, taking Australia’s daily case numbers to a new pandemic high just below 1,000.
New infections in greater Sydney reached 838, eclipsing Sunday’s record of 830 cases for the whole state. Some 85% of the state’s total infections lie in greater Sydney. A total of 113 people in the state are in intensive care, with 98 of those unvaccinated.
Westmead Hospital, one of the largest in Sydney’s hard-hit western suburbs, has reduced ambulance arrivals for COVID-19 patients for 24 hours and shifted critical patients to other hospitals, an internal note shared on Twitter by NSW lawmaker Cate Faehrmann showed.
Victorian outbreak grows quicker than NSW
Victoria’s COVID-19 outbreak has grown more quickly than NSW’s since Melbourne’s sixth lockdown began, but a number of key measures have trended down in recent days suggesting to some experts that the spread of the Delta strain could be controlled. Total cases, mystery cases and the crucial reproduction number – the average number of people each infected person passes the virus onto – have dropped for two days in a row, but the work of the state’s contact tracers is being hampered by people who feel sick for up to eight days before getting tested.
The total number of cases in the outbreak has multiplied by four in the weeks since the state entered this month’s lockdown, with the total number of cases growing from 221 (which had hung over from the fifth lockdown) to 878. Over the same period, NSW’s caseload multiplied by 3.6, going from 4077 to 14,673.
Victoria recorded 45 cases on Wednesday, down from 71 and 50 in preceding days. There were nine new mystery cases, down from 22 on Monday and 17 cases were in isolation for their entire infectious period – a metric that will be key to Victoria’s reopening.
