NSW hospitals bracing for tripling of Covid patients

New South Wales hospitals are preparing for Covid-related admissions to triple as cases soar, forcing further cuts or delays in care that could have long-lasting health effects, doctors and medical experts say.

Australia posted another record of more than 72,000 Covid cases on Thursday, including almost 35,000 in NSW. But restrictions on access to testing and patchy reporting means the true figure is likely to be far higher than the reported tallies.

The official, who was not authorised to comment publicly, said case numbers really took offer after Christmas. Cases in western Sydney, for instance, went from 500 to 5,000 a day.

While hospitalisation rates have increased, the system may still be about two weeks from a rise commensurate with the jump in cases, given the time it typically takes infected people to get sufficiently ill for hospital admission.

Liverpool hospital, with about 180 Covid patients, was gearing up for 600, with other hospitals similarly preparing for a major surge, another senior doctor said.

A proportion of ICU beds, typically set aside to cater for elective surgery that does not go as planned, will now be occupied by swelling numbers of Covid patients.

Current hospitalisations, now at about 1600 in NSW, could rise to 4500-5000, the doctor said.

Recent NSW figures estimate 70% of patients in hospital had the Delta variant, and about 60% were unvaccinated. As Omicron is much more contagious than Delta and so would infect many more people, it remains to be seen how an already exhausted health system will cope with the coming spike in hospitalisations.

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