NSW scales back Covid contact tracing as health system faces Omicron strain

NSW Health authorities are under increasing strain as the Covid Omicron variant pushes up hospital admissions, while its virulence means contact tracers have all but given up tracking its spread in the wider community.

A senior NSW Health official has revealed to Guardian Australia that tracing would now only be done for only those in aged and disability care, Indigenous communities and prisons.

He conceded, though, staff were stretched as the state recorded more than 6,000 new daily cases on Tuesday, with 557 people in hospital, including 60 in intensive care units.

Within the health system there is a growing fatigue after months of battling to contain different Covid variants, particularly Delta and now the more virulent Omicron strain.

Guardian Australia revealed yesterday that exhausted New South Wales health workers were being pressured to return from Christmas leave as hospitals and testing facilities are crippled by surging Covid numbers and staff furloughs.

About 2,000 health workers have been furloughed across the state after being listed as close contacts, prompting NSW Health to slash the isolation time for health workers from two weeks to seven days, provided they return a negative PCR test.

Perrottet has called for the focus to shift away from case numbers.

Hospitals, though, were bracing for further increases in patient numbers, with new Covid admissions more than doubling since mid-December.

Just over half of those presenting are positive for the Omicron variant, with the rest having Delta.

For now, though, big hospitals in Sydney, such as Liverpool in the south, have spare capacity which they did not have at the height of the Delta wave.

Perrottet said the government had made changes to the definition of close Covid contact for health workers that would allow an extra 1,000 health staff back to work. Previously staffers were unable to work following exposure to a Covid case for a fortnight, and this furlough had now been cut to seven days, he said.

Gerard Hayes, NSW state secretary of the Health Services Union, said the hospital system was not at breaking point, and the high take-up of vaccines and now boosters was making a big difference.

The help could include putting more staff into testing clinics or vaccination hubs to free up staff for clinical work.