Victoria has breached 800 COVID-19 hospitalisations, a milestone that could force health workers back from leave to cope with a serious winter wave and staff shortages.
National cabinet met on Saturday morning to respond to surging cases as 40,385 new infections were recorded across the country.
In Victoria, 9982 cases were recorded, along with eight deaths. There were 802 people in hospital in the state on Saturday morning, the highest number since February 1 when Omicron first exploded. Thirty-four people were in intensive care.
There were 802 people in hospital in Victoria on Saturday morning.Credit:Penny Stephens
In NSW, 11,082 people tested positive, while 2024 people were in hospital, 66 of them in intensive care. Thirty-eight deaths were recorded.
Across Australia, 4740 people were hospitalised, 151 people were admitted to intensive care, and another 77 people with COVID died.
The number of Victorians with COVID in hospital puts the state into stage three of the “health system winter response” plan, shared with hospital bosses, unions and key healthcare groups, as revealed by The Age this week.
Stage three includes regular emergency meetings, cancelling leave and stepping up telehealth consultations.
Dr Roderick McRae, Victorian president of the Australian Medical Association said he believed the response plan was a guideline and would not automatically trigger any changes.
Contingency plans for the worst-case scenarios could include a code brown declaration, a measure used to relieve short-term emergency pressures on hospitals.
Dr Roderick McRae, president of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association.Credit:Joe Armao
The Victorian government said it had no intention of reintroducing a code brown, after the declaration was made for almost a month in January.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been advised the BA.4 and BA.5 wave was expected to peak in August, as he announced the $750 leave payment would be available to casual workers who needed to isolate, until the end of September.
Before the national cabinet meeting, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet suggested states and territories could revise mandatory isolation periods for COVID-positive people from seven days to five, or even less, once the current surge has passed.
“Ultimately, we have to get to a point where if you are sick you stay at home and if you are not sick, you can go to work,” he told news.com.au.
In the UK, where former prime minister Boris Johnson scrapped mandatory self-isolation rules in January [although the National Health Service continues to advise people to isolate for five days], cases have soared.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimated 3.5 million people had COVID in the week to July 6, or about one in 18 people. More than 198,000 people have died with the virus in the UK.
After the cabinet meeting, Albanese dead-batted the issue of revising isolation periods. He said Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly had advised that now was not the time to change isolation advice.
“But that is something that will continue to be monitored and will come from the health experts,” the prime minister said.
Doherty Institute director Professor Sharon Lewin said while there were compromises involved in every approach, modelling showed people excreted the Omicron virus for a median eight days.
“When you let people out of isolation at seven days, there’s going to be a few people who are still positive,” she said. “So if you’ve made it earlier, there’ll be even more people that are positive.
Professor Sharon Lewin.Credit:Arsineh Houspian
“While case numbers are going up, I would think it would not be a great idea to reduce the isolation period. I’m not really sure what benefit it would give.”
Victorian Tourism Minister Steve Dimopoulos said the state’s current restrictions were minimal but were “prudent and sensible” to help keep Victoria open.
Going to work sick was “just not acceptable any more”, he said. “We know the risk that that holds to the entire community, let alone your office in your immediate work community.
“For us, the principle of staying at home when you’re sick is fundamentally important … any measure that allows people, [and] incentivises people, to stay home when they’re sick is a measure that is worth putting on the table and worth supporting.”
Premier Daniel Andrews returned early from leave to attend national cabinet, posting on Twitter that the high number of cases underscored the importance of people being able to isolate when they tested positive.
Professor Catherine Bennett, chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, said she would like to see more data about how long people remained infectious before isolation periods were shortened.
She said it was hard to say how long people should stay isolated because there were many variables around when people test positive.
“Some people might test straight away; others might take a week,” she said. “It would be good if this was evidence based. No one is looking at how far people are into an infection before they start isolation.“
She said if rules were altered to allow people out of isolation earlier, then people could be required to test and wear masks in the first few days they were in the community.
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” she said.
With Tom Cowie
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2022-07-16 03:56:31Z
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