Victoria records 34,836 cases, 18 Covid deaths

The state has notched up another 34,836 cases and 18 more Covid deaths as the number of active cases swells towards 240,000.

Victoria recorded 34,836 new cases and 18 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours.

There are now 976 infected people in Victorian hospitals, with 112 in intensive care and 30 on ventilators.

Victoria’s pre-Omicron peak for Covid hospitalisations was 851 in October when the state was battling a surge in Delta infections.

However, the figure is dwarfed by the 2525 people in NSW who are in hospital with Covid.

More than 93 per cent of eligible Victorians are fully vaccinated and the state has a mammoth 239,396 active cases.

Victorians again turned out in their thousands to be swabbed for coronavirus. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

A total of 62,445 PCR tests were taken on Wednesday and 24,071 vaccines were administered at state hubs.

Hotels once used to quarantine Victoria’s returned travellers are soon set to be filled with Covid patients in a bid to ease pressure on hospitals.

The move follows another spike in the number of Covid patients hospitalised across the state as the total number of admitted patients nears 1000.

The plan was discussed by Health Minister Martin Foley and acting chief health officer Ben Cowie last week and is expected to include patients on the cusp of hospital release.

However, Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said the scheme could be the clearest sign yet the state’s hospitals simply aren’t coping.

“If they still require care, they should be in a health facility and these hotels are not health facilities. That would basically be an admission the hospital systems are failing to cope,” he told The Age.

The hotels once used to house Victoria’s returned travellers will soon be filled with Covid patients. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

“That would be No. 1 a bad decision for those individuals, putting them at an increased risk of further problems, but also it would be a reflection of how serious the situation is in the hospitals.”

But infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake said the move was pragmatic and proved the system was working.

“It’s a very serious situation at the moment, but the system is working. And these are the measures, like getting people who have got Covid but don’t need that sort of acute level of care that you need in a hospital, getting them to another facility is a great idea,” Professor Senanayake told Today.

“We have seen medi-hotels used prior to pandemics for other reasons. So this will all help because this is a situation where we’ve got a virus that is highly transmissible but, of course, doesn’t make people as sick as earlier variants, so we have an opportunity to use strategies like this.”

Originally published as Victoria records 34,836 cases, 18 Covid deaths