NSW Health System Under Pressure Despite Cases Dropping

New South Wales sustains another tragic day as 25 lives have been lost with Covid-related illnesses in the past 24-hours despite cases evening out.

There were 30,825 new infections reported on Thursday, a slight drop by 1,472 cases from the previous day.

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The new cases were detected from 13,178 at-home RATs and 17,647 PCR swabs collected from state-run hubs.

Of the RAT results reported about 11,034 were recorded from the previous seven days.

There are currently 2,781 people admitted to hospital with Covid, while 212 of those are in ICU, it is not reported how many are ventilated.

In NSW 93.8 per cent of people aged over 16 are fully vaccinated, while more than 95 per cent have received their first dose and over 29 per cent have received a booster.

Meantime, premier Dominic Perrottet has boasted he was confident the state’s healthcare system was outrunning the best-case scenario modelling.

“That doesn’t mean the system isn’t under pressure, we are monitoring it with our health systems each and every day,” he told ABC on Thursday morning.

“They’re doing an amazing job co-ordinating our health response while we’re under significant pressure."

“We are confident here as we sit, that we have the capacity to manage, and the investments that we’ve made in the past have ensured that’s the case. But that does not mean that our health teams are not under stress,” he said.

The Premier did however recognise that hospital worker's concerns were valid given the pressures they are under. 

“Because many of our staff are obviously furloughed … and that’s putting increasing pressure on the system,” he told Sunrise.

“When I look at the hospitalisations, ICU capacity, that’s going quite well. It’s just the pressure on our nurses and our doctors that’s putting the system under pressure.”

It comes after exhausted ICU nurses protested outside Westmead Hospital in Sydney's west on Wednesday speaking out about the ‘dangerous and chaotic” condition in hospital wards due to staffing issues.

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