New South Wales has recorded a slight drop in daily Covid cases, with 882 new infections announced on Friday, as Gladys Berejiklian played down concerns about the state’s hospital capacity.
The premier also unveiled her reopening plan for school students, which will see kindergarten and year one students begin to return to schools from 25 October and the HSC pushed back to November.
The other year groups will have their return dates staggered over the following three weeks, with students segregated by year group when on campus, and a mask mandate for high school students and teachers. Teachers and staff will have to be vaccinated by 8 November.
However, Berejiklian suggested that remote learning could remain for students in LGAs of concern, pending health advice closer to the return date.
Late on Friday, NSW Health announced a change for essential workers in LGAs of concern travelling outside of their area for work. From Monday, workers in these LGAs who had not had at least one vaccine dose were to be allowed to leave for work provided they submitted to rapid antigen testing at their workplaces instead.
However, this offer to unvaccinated workers has been shelved, with the state government extending by one week – until 6 September – the date by which essential workers leaving LGAs of concern must receive at least one vaccination does.
In a sign of the strain contact tracers are under, NSW Health will no longer reveal the isolation status and unlinked case numbers each day.
Covid spread across regional NSW was continuing, with 40 new cases in the western health district, including 25 in Dubbo, five in Bourke, four in Orange and four in Narromine.
In the far west of the state, Wilcannia recorded nine new cases, with the majority Indigenous population having the highest rate of Covid transmission in NSW. The town does not have a ventilator.
Health authorities also reported two deaths on Friday – a man in his 60s who died at Nepean hospital after becoming infected at the hospital whose death was announced on Thursday, as well as a man in his 90s from western Sydney who died at Concord hospital after acquiring Covid at Canterbury. His was the fifth death of the Canterbury hospital’s outbreak, with 22 active cases now linked to the cluster.
Hospital pressure continued to be a growing concern for authorities. There are currently 767 Covid patients in hospitals in the state, with 117 in intensive care and 47 of those on ventilators. Of the 117 in intensive care, 104 have had no vaccine doses.
Berejiklian assured people the system had been preparing to expand ICU capacity, but warned NSW residents should expect hospital operations to be “done differently” and not to compare this with non-pandemic times.
“We have been ready for additional ICU patients for a long time,” she said. “We have always had those contingency plans, but what is confronting for us is when you have a network that has great staff, is seeing more patients, it does stretch things and it does mean things are done differently.
“Please judge the system and its ability to cope based on what you’d expect in a pandemic, not what you’d expect under normal circumstances,” Berejiklian said.
The deputy chief health officer, Dr Marianne Gale, said healthcare workers, including those who had not worked in intensive care for years and others with no experience of the units, were being trained to help fill staff shortages.
“There has been a lot of work across our system since the beginning of the epidemic to ensure our workforce is well equipped, well-trained, well up-to-date,” Gale said.
“Across the state our intensive care network is very well-connected, there is a lot of capacity across the state in terms of ICU beds, and our services are well equipped to care for anybody who may need those services,” she said.
Gale acknowledged Westmead hospital, which set up an emergency operations centre this week after ambulances were reported waiting 12 hours to deliver patients, was facing stress in its ICU capacity.
She also reiterated that the health system could expand to 2,000 ventilated ICU beds if needed, and insisted there would be enough staff in the system to care for every one of these patients.
However, she did not directly address questions about concerns over the quality of care by hastily trained up ICU staff.
Younger people continued to account for the bulk of Sydney’s cases. Of Friday’s 882 new cases, 92 were in children aged under 10, 146 were those aged 10-19, 240 were in their 20s, 158 were in their 30s, 104 were in their 40s, 76 were in their 50s and 38 were in their 60s.
Western and south-west parts of the city under the tightest lockdown restrictions also continued to generate the majority of new cases.
There were 165 new cases in Canterbury-Bankstown, 163 in Cumberland, 95 in Blacktown, 62 in Liverpool, 59 in Fairfield, 48 in Parramatta, 48 in Penrith, 25 in Campbelltown, 14 in Bayside, 11 in Georges River and five in Strathfield.
Authorities had called for extra vigilance from residents in Merrylands, Guildford, Auburn, Greenacre, Punchbowl and Condell Park.
