NSW records 29,504 new Covid cases

There are currently 2776 people in hospital with the virus, up from 2650 on Sunday, of whom 203 are in intensive care, up from 191.

Monday’s numbers are again a drop from Sunday’s 34,660, which fell from 48,768 infections on Saturday and more than 63,000 on Friday.

Of the new cases on Monday, 11,858 were from rapid antigen tests and 17,646 were from PCR.

A massive 10,187 RAT results were from the previous seven days.

There is now 95.2 per cent people in NSW aged over 16 who have had one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, 93.8 per cent have had two and 26.1 per cent have received a booster.

Among children aged 12 to 15, 82.1 per cent have received their first dose of a vaccine, while 78.3 per cent have had two doses.

Of the children aged five to 11, 13.1 per cent have had one dose of the vaccine in the past week.

NSW Health is continuing to reinforce that daily case numbers may not be an accurate depiction of the true number of cases because “there may be some cases included in these numbers where people have reported positive RATs on multiple days, and/or where people have also had a positive PCR test during the same reporting period”.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard on Sunday said he was concerned over lower vaccination rates in northern NSW including Byron Bay and Lismore.

He took aim at people who were ignoring being vaccinated or spreading misinformation about Covid immunisation.

“They will be responsible for people in hospital or much worse. And there’s more, one day this week we had six people in (Lismore Hospital) intensive care unit and all six were unvaccinated,” Mr Hazzard told reporters.

“You can’t get a clearer message than that. In a hospital, you have everybody who’s in the ICU unvaccinated, there is a message for the rest of the state. Go and get vaccinated.”

Modelling released last week for NSW showed a worst-case scenario would put 6000 people in hospital with Covid and 600 receiving intensive care at the peak.

However in the best-case scenario, the modelling predicted there would be 3158 Covid patients in hospital at the peak, while 270 of those would be in ICU.

Premier Dominic Perrottet said while there is a “difficult few weeks” ahead but the modelling is “very reassuring and encouraging”.

NSW is yet to reach the “peak”, but Dr Kerry Chant says it is close.

The state’s top doctor said half of NSW’s population could eventually become infected with the virus, with some being asymptomatic and never knowing they had it.

“Not all of those will have symptomatic infections or even know that they’ve been infected,” she said.

Originally published as NSW records 29,504 new Covid cases as experts say state near ‘peak’ of cases