102 South Australian Covid patients in hospital as cases hit 3246 on Tuesday

SA recorded 3246 new Covid cases on Tuesday, with 102 patients in hospital and several more admitted to intensive care. Replay the daily briefing here.

This coronavirus article is unlocked and free to read in the interest of community health and safety. Get full digital access to trusted news – including the very latest Covid news, views, Q&As, guides and analysis – from The Advertiser with our great introductory offer.

South Australia recorded 3246 new Covid cases on Tuesday, with 102 patients in hospital.

There are now 12 patients in ICU, one of whom requires a ventilator, Premier Steven Marshall said on Tuesday. Cases in the prison system increased from 90 to 128.

“We have 102 people in hospital in South Australia at the moment but that is well within our capacity,” Mr Marshall said.

He said 30-40 per cent of patients in hospital with Covid were not fully vaccinated, compared with about 10 per cent in the wider community, “so it’s a massive misrepresentation”.

There were 20,856 tests on Monday and Mr Marshall said there had been an uptick in people getting vaccinated after a festive season slowdown.

Tuesday’s numbers are a significant increase in new cases compared to Monday’s figure of 2552.

Mr Marshall said test results were taking shorter time to process – dropping from 26 hours to 18. “You’re waiting five days in Victoria for a result – you’re not waiting five days in SA,” he said.

Mr Marshall said there were currently 102 people in the state’s medi-hotels, mostly infectious people who can’t isolate at home. They include at least two infectious tennis player support staffers, here for the international event at Memorial Drive, who are isolating in the Pullman.

He defended SA Pathology after it misplaced a container filled with Covid swabs, saying it appeared to be a simple logistical error.

Police Commissioner and state co-ordinator Grant Stevens, who has contracted Covid, is continuing to work and Mr Marshall said “he’s a pretty stoic individual ... he’s got very mild symptoms”.

TUESDAY’S PRESS CONFERENCE

READ MORE

■ ‘Forever young, forever loved’: SA rallies around family of baby Dakota
■ Interstate numbers: 23k in NSW, 14k in Victoria, 5k in Queensland
■ Testing wait times balloon as Clinpath closes four sites
■ Police Commissioner Grant Stevens contracts Covid
■ Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas catches the virus
■ Lost and found: Mystery of the missing Covid swabs
■ Confusion on whether primary schools will reopen on time

MONDAY JANUARY 3 UPDATE

SA Premier Steven Marshall says the state recorded 2552 new Covid cases on Monday, with 94 people now in hospital, nine in ICU. No one is on a ventilator. The vast majority are Omicron patients.

“It is fitting that pattern that (Omicron) is far more transmissible, but the symptoms are far less than what we were envisaging with Delta,” Mr Marshall said.

It comes as Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas tests positive.

“We’ve seen those lines continue to shorten across SA and those waiting times are really coming down,” Mr Marshall said.

There are 90 people with Covid in the state’s prisons – a rise from 60 yesterday.

Mr Marshall also moved to clear up confusion over SA’s close contact rules, saying people who had been indoors, face-to-face with an unmasked positive case for at least 15 minutes were “very likely” to have the virus and considered a close contact.

Until now the rules have been guidelines, but will now become legal directions after sign off from Police Commissioner Grant Stevens as state co-ordinator.

The rules have sparked mass confusion after national cabinet signed off on a four hour household contact definition last Thursday.

“If you’ve been indoors with someone who has Covid without a mask, you are a close contact,” Mr Marshall said.

Unless they fall into the 15-minute category – which includes workplaces or anywhere indoors – someone who has simply spent time at a spot where a positive case was is not considered a close contact, he said.

For example, someone who dined at a restaurant where a positive case sat four or five tables away was not considered a close contact.

“This provides the clarity that I think a lot of people were asking for,” Mr Marshall said.

“We know you are highly likely to be Covid positive if you are face-to-face without masks in an indoor setting.”

An exposure site is a site where there has been considerable transmission, he said.

Casual contacts no longer have to isolate, he said. All close contacts must isolate now for only seven days.

He said the government expected Omicron to peak in SA before the end of the month but would not speculate on case numbers.

“We don’t have a projection in terms of the numbers, but we do have forecasting coming back to us before the end of the week in regards to what that peak date is likely to be, I believe it will be before the end of January,” he said.

All non-urgent elective surgery will also be banned from 12.01am Tuesday, he announced.

Mr Marshall downplayed suggestions the 15-minute rule would cause a drop in people willing to eat at restaurants or go out.

“No, I don’t think (it will), people have been cautious in SA since Omicron arrived – we saw a subdued New Year’s Eve and that's what we needed,” he said.

He admitted “there was no doubt” hospitality was “different this year” but pointed to the state government’s $40m rescue package.

Cars lining up at the Victoria Park Pakapakanthi Covid drive-through testing clinic. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

SUNDAY JANUARY 2 UPDATE

SA Health listed several new close contact exposure sites late Sunday, as the number of new cases soared.

They included anyone who was at the Dog and Duck on Hindley St on New Year’s Eve from 10pm until 11pm, or the Exchange Hotel at Gawler on Christmas Eve from 6.30pm to 10.30pm.

The West Augusta Football Club gym at Port Augusta West was also listed at various times on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

Anyone who was at the sites at times of concern must get a PCR test immediately and quarantine for seven days since being at the site.

The new sites were listed despite the Prime Minister Scott Morrison overhauling the definition of a close contact to people who lived with positive cases, intimate partners, or those who spent more than four hours with the infectious person.

SA recorded 2298 new cases on Sunday, with 82 people in hospital, seven of whom are in intensive care.

It follows two days of more than 2000 new cases in SA, with 21,140 tests conducted on Saturday.

Premier Steven Marshall said the 82 people in hospital were within the state’s “current capacities”, because a lot of patients were only staying in for short periods until they are stabilised.”

There are seven children in hospital, down from 10 on Saturday. And there were 60 Covid positive patients within the prison system, most of whom were in Mobilong Prison but there were also some in Adelaide Women’s Prison and Adelaide Pre-Release Centre

A worker has also tested positive at Port Augusta Prison.

It comes as Mr Marshall urged all eligible South Australians to get their third jab following a drop in the number of people rolling up their sleeve on New Year’s Day.

“We did have a drop off yesterday, we know it was New Year’s Day …. but most vaccination clinics were reporting that there was plenty of spare capacity,” Mr Marshall said.

“This is a disease which doesn’t take the day off,” he told reporters on Sunday.

“This is a disease that we really need to take seriously, especially the new Omicron variant.”

He added that SA was “massively flexing up capacity” for booster vaccinations.

“We still are weeks away from the peak of this disease,” he said.

He defended opening up borders, saying that decision was made before Omicron reared its head.

From Monday, January 3, all public transport workers must have had at least one Covid-19 jab, and a booking for a second.