The Australian Medical Association has warned Aussies who are deliberately trying to get Covid about a consequence they may not have not considered.
The vice president of the Australian Medical Association has warned Australians complacent about the current Omicron wave, urging against those hoping to be infected as national hospitalisations rise.
Yesterday, there were 3992 hospital staff that were not available to work, because they were either Covid-19 cases or close contacts. A further 422 Ambulance Victoria staff were also unable to work.
According to experts, NSW staffing issues are being compounded by the sheer volume of patients. While current case numbers in intensive care are lower than the Delta wave, it’s proving to be more challenging and more difficult and the main reason is the furloughing of staff.
Vice president Chris Moy said the healthcare system is beginning to see the toll that a world-scale pandemic can bring, with the workforce being “overwhelmed and exhausted” at the recent case explosion.
“Just an overwhelmed and exhausted workforce which has been through Covid and been the foundation of the vaccination program just suddenly getting slammed last week with sort of queries,” he told The Project.
“Because I think what you‘re seeing is just the overwhelming of the hospital system to be able to manage the huge number of patients with Covid and suddenly that whole burden shifting right onto general practice just when we’re trying to embark on the far biggest part of the vaccination program — that’s the boosters and children in the next month or so.”
When asked about people wanting to get infected with the new strain to “get it over with”, Dr Moy warned the public to treat Omicron as a threat despite commonly being accepted as the least severe strain to hit shores.
It came after Queensland‘s chief health officer blasted people for hosting Covid-19 parties on the Gold Coast.
“No, no, no, no, no! I mean it‘s a bit like — unfortunately the Minister has said we’re all going to get it,” he said.
“No, we might all be exposed to it but what we don’t want is everybody sick at the same time because some percentage of us are all going to end up in the hospital at the same time and that’s going to overwhelm our health system.
“What we need to do is to try and slow this down as much as possible so we don’t get this huge peak of people in hospital at the same time.”
On Monday, NSW faced the deadliest day of the pandemic so far, with the virus claiming the lives of 18 residents, including a young child, with a total of 20,293 new cases confirmed.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet announced the state government would soon mandate the registration of positive rapid antigen tests, with Health Minister Brad Hazzard later confirming it had been requested by chief health officer Kerry Chant.
He said the health department had sought legal advice over how to enforce compulsory reporting.
The news comes after days of speculation regarding how the state was going to get an accurate understanding of the volume of new cases, after the government earlier announced that PCR tests would no longer be needed to confirm a positive Covid case.
Instead, authorities confirmed positive home rapid antigen tests (RATs) would be sufficient, after testing sites were completely overwhelmed as cases skyrocketed and as holiday-makers sought testing before their summer getaways.
The mandatory reporting of positive RATs is expected to come into effect later this week.
Originally published as Australian Medical Association VP Chris Moy warns against Omicron complacency on The Project
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