Grim milestone marks extra push for booster jabs

More than 1000 people are now battling Covid in Victorian hospitals. Covid commander Jeroen Weimar used the confronting statistic to remind Victorians to get the booster vaccine.

More than 1000 people are now battling Covid-19 in Victorian hospitals – the highest number since the pandemic began.

Covid Response commander Jeroen Weimar used the grim milestone to remind Victorians to get their vaccine boosters, saying that about 1.2 million people have already had a third jab.

“You can get your third dose today, you can get it tomorrow, we are open, those clinics are open seven days a week,” he said.

“It’s important because, sadly, yesterday we passed the 1000 barrier of the number of people with coronavirus in Victorian hospitals. There are now 1054 people in hospital with Covid – it’s the highest number we have seen during the entire pandemic to date.”

Despite representing a tiny proportion of Victorians, about half of the people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 were unvaccinated.

Mr Weimar said the peak of hospitalisations wasn’t due until the end of this month or early February and said it would be an “exceptionally difficult” month ahead.

There were 25,226 new coronavirus cases recorded over the past 24 hours, and 23 people have died.

While this is lower than previous days’ numbers, Mr Weimar said the state was probably a “long way” from any downward trend in case numbers.

The rise in hospitalisations is being blamed on the fast-moving Omicron variant, which is sparking major health concerns but is also battering the state’s economic recovery.

In recognition of the hardship businesses are now facing, Small Business Minister Jaala Pulford revealed the Andrews Government will extend rent relief for commercial tenants until mid-March.

The scheme will be available to businesses with an annual turnover of $10 million of less, and which have had a decline in turnover of at least 30 per cent since the pandemic began.

Landlords will be required to provide proportional rent relief in line with the pain being felt by their tenants, and can then claim support through a landlord hardship fund.

“This is really about giving small businesses who have used the commercial tenancies relief scheme, those that have had a loss of turnover in excess of 30 per cent compared to pre-pandemic earnings, just that extra couple of months that they need to get through this wave that we are experiencing,” Mr Pulford said.

Ms Pulford encouraged consumers to back local businesses in any way they could even if at home isolating, listing takeaway, online shopping and gift vouchers as options for support.

The minister and Mr Weimar paid tribute to staff working in healthcare and battling the pandemic, and urged people to get tested if needed.

Mr Weimar said if people were struggling to get Rapid Antigen Tests there were other options at state-run PCR centres.

“If you need access to testing our testing sites are free,” he said.

He said a delay in the process of tests which resulted in about 90,000 results being cancelled yesterday was unfortunate, but that the system had held up relatively well during the pandemic.

“This is a difficult predicament for the labs, when these backlogs build up, the trade off that they have to make is ‘do we focus on processing tests that were taken yesterday or the day before and getting speedy results where it can make a difference to their behaviour, or are we dealing with tests that are 7, 8, 9, 10 days old where people would have already passed their infectious period?”

Hotel Hospitals

The government has announced the Pullman hotel and Mantra at Epping would become “medi-hotels” to help take pressure off the hospital system.

The hotels will house patients who are nearing the end of their hospital stay and in need of lower-level care.

There will be capacity for 300 patients who will be offered a hospital in the home style care system from Monday, with the help of Northern Health and Royal Melbourne Hospital.

The move will allow hospitals to concentrate on patients with higher care needs.

Hotel quarantine for unvaccinated returned overseas travellers and emergency accommodation for Covid positive members of the community and frontline workers will continue at separate hotels.

Acting Health Minister James Merlino said it would provide an “extra buffer” for the rising numbers of patients in our hospitals.

“All patients will be medically assessed by the hospital before transfer to ensure that they are well enough to be relocated. They’ll remain under the care of the hospital and still be considered an inpatient even while they’re in the medi-hotel,” he said.

Mr Melino urged people to get vaccinated, revealing half of the patients in ICU came from just six per cent of the population. And 60 per cent of deaths are from three per cent of the population, over 50s who are not jabbed.