Concerns over rising death rates and hospitals’ ability to cope with surge

Alarms are being raised over hospitals’ ability to cope with record death rates and thousands of hospitalisations.

Record high Covid deaths and thousands of hospitalisations are raising alarm about the ability of NSW hospitals to cope with the current scale of the pandemic.

Shadow health minister Ryan Park told 2GB on Monday the health system was “in absolute crisis and at breaking point”.

”We cannot simply have a health system that goes on like this, because there is too much strain on our health workers,” Mr Park said.

Sunday was the deadliest day for NSW during the pandemic, with 52 deaths. Of those, 31 were aged care residents.

Long wait times for elective surgery due to limited hospital resources were another concern, Mr Park said.

Premier Dominic Perrottet is under fire for his handling of the pandemic amid a spike in deaths and hospitalisations. Picture Gaye Gerard / NCA Newswire.

Premier Dominic Perrottet defended his government’s pandemic management and said high vaccination rates would help the state get through the Omicron wave.

“We’ve always known as we open up society that there’ll be an increase in hospitalisations and (intensive care unit admissions),” he said.

“The reality is, we can’t eliminate the virus … that is not this government’s strategy. That is not the national strategy.”

Earlier in the day, health officials said they would investigate why almost 2000 positive PCR test results were left out of the daily Covid reporting for weeks after they were processed.

NSW Health on Monday said the tests, which were taken from December 25 to January 6 in the Northern Sydney Local Health District, weren’t uploaded until Sunday.

“Investigations into this issue are underway and NSW Health anticipates there will be further historic uploads from the Northern Sydney LHD in coming days,” the health department said in a statement.

Chief health officer Kerry Chant urged people to get boosted. Picture: David Swift

The missed PCR tests contributed to NSW’s 13,026 new Covid cases reported on Monday.

Of these, 7362 were recorded from PCR tests and 5664 from rapid antigen tests.

Twenty-seven more people died with the virus.

There were 2779 cases being treated in the state’s hospitals, with 185 in intensive care, both up from the prior day’s numbers.

The update came on the day most NSW students returned to classrooms.

NSW recorded 13,026 new Covid cases in the latest reporting period. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Chief health officer Kerry Chant urged those who were eligible to get their third vaccine shot, especially those who are at higher risk of serious illness.

“I particularly want to make a call out for those with chronic underlying health conditions and for those that are elderly,” she said.

“I think as I tragically have read out the deaths that have occurred, you can see that there is a preponderance of people that are the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, and Covid will continue to impact on those individuals.”

Dr Chant confirmed a new Omicron subvariant had been detected in NSW.

“At the moment we don’t see that it is presenting anything different clinically in terms of the severity or its response to vaccine, but we will obviously be watchful, monitor the situation closely,” she said.