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The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an ugly turn in Australia, as fresh daily cases in the country, as well as the worst-hit New South Wales province breached the 1,000 mark for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
NSW, which has Sydney as its provincial capital, on Wednesday reported 1,029 new locally acquired cases, exceeding the previous record of 919 it had set a day earlier. Of the new cases, 969 were detected in the greater Sydney area, a steep spike from 838 a day earlier.
On a national basis, Australia recorded close to 1,100 cases.
Sydney has been battling to contain the pandemic for quite a time, including the imposition of complete lockdown and partial lockdown for the two months now.
The steep rise in COVID-19 cases has forced Sydney’s Westmead and Blacktown hospitals, which serve the city’s western suburbs, to erect makeshift screening and swab testing centres for the patients in tents to help manage capacity.
Provincial Premier Gladys Berejiklian said that the state authorities had quadrupled the number of the state’s intensive care ventilators to 2,000 early last year.
Yet another problem plaguing NSW has been the fact that the non-vaccinated people are the worst hit in the pandemic. There are 116 patients in the intensive care units in Sydney, of which 102 are still not vaccinated.
Mr Berejiklian assured that although the system was “under pressure,” it could withstand the current crisis once the vaccination COVID-19 increases in the state.
“It might be different to the help you got before because of the situation, but please know, the system is kicking in,” Berejiklian said at a televised media conference.
The current third wave of the pandemic has taken the sheen off from Australia’s initial success against the virus that kept its coronavirus patient numbers relatively low. The country has now 47,700 cases and 989 deaths.
