Royal Children’s Hospital Emergency Department

Parents are being urged to save the hospital trip for emergencies only as wait times at the Royal Children’s Hospital Emergency Department balloon.

Wait times at the Royal Children’s Hospital Emergency Department are ballooning to over four hours as the hospital deals with an “extremely busy” period.

Parents are being urged to save the hospital trip for emergencies only, encouraged to visit their local hospital or GP to ease the stress on staff and other patients.

When this number of patients is reported, children may be forced to wait “more than four hours”, as the hospital pleads with parents to only bring their kids when they have no other option.

“Our Emergency Department (ED) is currently experiencing an incredibly high volume of patients,” a statement said.

“During this busy period, we encourage you to visit your local hospital ED where possible,”

“We ask that only one parent or carer accompany their child to the ED where possible.”

Royal Children's Hospital exterior. RCH. Picture: Fiona Hamilton

It comes as Victoria’s Covid hospital cases continue to hover in the high 400s, having peaked at 502 on Friday — the highest number since February. 

But hospitalisations have been on the rise and steadily increasing since March 12 when they dropped to a low of 175, to this week where they topped 500. 

Victoria has not had that many people in hospital with Covid since February 11.

International concern continues to grow over new Omicron variants – BA.4 and BA.5 – which have been detected in Victoria. 

World Health Organisation director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the news that reported Covid cases and deaths worldwide hit their lowest level this week since March 2020 – while welcome – “didn’t tell the full story”. 

“Driven by Omicron sub-variants, we are seeing an increase in reported cases in the Americas and Africa,” he said. 

“The South African scientists who identified Omicron late last year have now reported two more Omicron sub-variants, BA.4 and BA.5, as the reason for a spike in cases in South Africa.”

But he said “we don’t know what’s coming next” as the genetic sequencing which identified these variants in South Africa is no longer being carried out in “many other countries”. 

“The BA.4 and BA.5 sub variants were identified because South Africa is still doing the vital genetic sequencing that many other countries have stopped doing,” he said. 

“In many countries we’re essentially blind to how the virus is mutating.”

Associate Professor Stuart Turville, from Immunovirology and Pathogenesis Program at the Kirby Institute from the University of New South Wales, said the new variants were examples of “small changes in the right place”.

He told the Australian Science Media Centre these new Omicron variants, are descended from BA2 Omicron — referred to as “stealth omicron”.

Both BA1 and BA2 Omicron were noticeable for their ability to “significantly evade a previous antibody response (through past infection and/or vaccine generated)”.

“Compared to the modest 2 fold drop in potency observed by Delta, these new variants resulted in greater than 16-fold drop,” he added.

He said the new Omicron variants were likely to replace BA1 and BA2.

“BA2 sublineages are “whittling away” and are likely becoming fitter in the real world and displacing the original BA1 and BA2,” he said.

MORE CASES OF OMICRON VARIANT FOUND IN MELBOURNE

Further cases of a new, mutant Omicron strain are detected in Melbourne, with the BA.2.12.1 and the BA.4 or BA.5 sub-variants being reported in wastewater samples on Friday.

Two detections of the BA.2.12.1 have been found in the Melbourne Airport water catchment and from a catchment that services Melbourne’s northeast.

Another two of the same variant have been found in the southeast Melbourne catchment.

The Department of Health has reported that the BA.4 or BA.5 strain has been detected twice more in catchments servicing the inner southern suburbs and northeast Donvale.

Authorities will continue to analyse PCR samples from the wastewater to better understand the strength and transmission of these new strains.