Australian hospitals must brace for an “inevitable increase” in hospitalisations, despite being on track to eliminate the disease, experts have warned.
People tend to need hospitalisation around 11 days after being diagnosed with the virus. Picture: PMO.In Australia, new cases of COVID-19 peaked at 460 a day on March 28. That number has fallen in April.
The warning comes as more than 200 intensive care beds have been installed in Victoria to prepare for a peak in cases in the coming days. “Our best estimate at the moment in Australia is for every 10 infectious cases, they’re only reproducing another five and this shows our epidemic at the moment is in decline,” the Doherty Institute’s epidemiology director Professor Jodie McVernon said.
Border closures and social distancing measures are working but the Doherty Institute cautioned it was difficult to tease out the impact of individual measures such as school closures or even lockdowns.
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