SA records 484 new Covid cases, one in ICU

South Australia has announced 484 new Covid cases, with one man in ICU and a handful of patients now being treated in three Adelaide hospitals.

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South Australia has hit a new record of 484 Covid cases in one day as Premier Steven Marshall stands firm on removing restrictions within a week.

Mr Marshall’s commitment on Thursday came as seven people were being treated in public hospitals, including one man in his 30s on ventilation at the Flinders Hospital intensive care unit.

Other patients included a child at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, two men in their 50s and 60s and two women in their 90s at Royal Adelaide Hospital and a woman in her 30s at Flinders Hospital.

Mr Marshall said the state remained committed to easing restrictions next Tuesday, in line with its Covid-Ready Plan, which included reopening the borders on November 23.

Under the planned changes, residential premises, nightclubs and gyms will have increased space limitations of 1 person per 2sq m while indoor venues such as hotels, restaurants, funeral homes, function centres and sports stadiums can have 3 people per 4sq m.

However, officials were closely monitoring the situation in SA.

“If we’ve got anything to update (on the planned easing of restrictions) I guarantee we’ll be coming out as quickly as possible to give as much certainty and clarity to people,” he said.

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“We are concerned about what’s going on interstate at the moment with the very significant surge in numbers.”

New South Wales on Thursday recorded its biggest ever number of new cases, with 5715 positive test results while Victoria had 2005, the highest number in two months.

In South Australia, there were 43 children, 26 teenagers, 192 women aged between 18 and 96 and 223 males aged between 18 and 88 who tested positive.

They included 230 people who had been double vaccinated and 70 who were unvaccinated.

The vaccination status of 184 cases has yet to be determined.

The latest cases take the total since the border reopened on November 23 to 1307.

Mr Marshall flagged that SA was, at some point, likely to consider three Covid-19 vaccination jabs as “fully vaccinated” rather than the existing definition of two shots.

“Ultimately, I think we will arrive at a position where the three shots will be what we class as fully vaccinated,” he said.

“But we’ll wait for a bit more final information from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.”

Mr Marshall’s comments came as NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said about 80 per cent of the cases across the state were now Omicron.

She said the risk of hospitalisation was 60 to 80 per cent lower with Omicron than with Delta.

“We are now seeing Delta as a proportion of cases declining,” she said.

“Pulling together multiple pieces of evidence … it indicates that infection with Omicron is likely to be mild.”

SA Health said on Thursday the number of Omicron cases in the state had increased from eight to 36.

They were among the 484 new cases, of which 108 were acquired within SA and 10 interstate.

Investigations were continuing into the source of another 366 cases.

The cases took the total of new infections since the borders opened last month to 1307, with 1214 of them active.