‘Displaced’: State’s bleak hospital outlook

Government officials and health professionals from across the country have warned of the coming third wave driven by the infectious Omicron BA. 4 and BA. 5 subvariants.

Covid hospitalisations have increased in Victoria by more than 50 per cent in the last two weeks alone, as wards also deal with resurgent flu numbers.

Melbourne University’s Head of the Melbourne School of Health Sciences, Bruce Thompson, said Victorians are being “displaced” in hospitals as a system which already had capacity issues before Covid struggles to cope.

“In 2019 we didn’t have enough beds, and now we have a new condition that didn’t exist before and this is a doozy – it takes up a lot of beds,” he told 3AW on Thursday.

“At the moment we’ve got 740 people in the hospital with escalating pneumonia. We didn’t have 740 extra beds floating around, so we have to displace people to be able to do that or expand the size.”

Mr Thompson said while taking steps like getting vaccinated was important to decrease transmission, there was another measure he wanted Victorians to take up.

“Everyone really needs to start wearing masks again,” he said.

“I really think our leaders need to walk out on television wearing a mask and we certainly are doing it (at the Melbourne School of Health Sciences) because we’ve got to look after our healthcare workers.”

On Tuesday the state government “strongly recommended” that masks be worn indoors and in crowded settings under new pandemic orders and public health advice.

Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas later revealed she ignored advice from the state’s acting chief health officer, Ben Cowie, to mandate masks in certain settings.

“The chief health officer has provided his advice and I have accepted his advice, except that I have chosen not to extend mandates for mask wearing in some of the settings that were recommended to me,” she said on Tuesday.

“The advice from the chief health officer was to mandate mask wearing in early childhood and school settings, and indeed in retail and in some hospitality settings for workers in those areas.

“I made a decision based on the advice that I had received that further mandating masks was not the most effective way to get the message out about the importance of mask wearing.

“We need to empower Victorians to make their own decisions.”

Victoria’s Covid hospitalisation numbers increased again on Thursday, with 771 in hospital, 34 in the ICU and nine on ventilators.

Victorian Australian Medical Association president Dr Roderick McRae told 3AW on Tuesday that “it beggars belief about how we’ve allowed ourselves to get to this situation”.

He also said “we’ve pretty well established” that some hospitals will need to shut down wards and reduce elective surgery due to the increasing numbers”.

Originally published as Patients being displaced in Victoria as Covid hospitalisation rises