Health authorities won’t be able to conduct the number of tests required to identify extremely high daily caseloads, says epidemiologist Catherine Bennett.
and pathology labs may not have the capacity to identify very high caseloads.
The state reported a record 3763 cases on Wednesday, up from 1360 a week earlier. The number of people in hospital increased to 302 from 284, with 40 people in intensive care.the state would be “heading towards 20,000 cases a day by mid-January” at current rates, assuming nothing were to change.by the end of January, citing high-level early data modelling from the Public Health Unit at UNSW.
“If we continue to respond or act in the same manner that we are now, cases will continue to double every three to four days,” said Professor McCaw.But Deakin University’s Professor Bennett said people were cancelling events and limiting their movement in the lead-up to Christmas without any changes to public health orders, which should reduce transmission of the virus.
“The reality is we won’t know when we have 20,000 cases a day ... because we won’t be able to pick that up in testing. We won’t have the capacity,” she said.
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