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South Australia has reported 1471 new Covid cases on Wednesday, with hospitals cancelling most elective surgery operations and tourism testing now banned.
Premier Steven Marshall revealed he expects cases number to double every three or four days and urged people to work from home until the end of January at least.
‘We are seeing big increases in the number of new infections in a very short period of time,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to slow the spread of Omicron.’
The state has now banned all tourism testing for people wanting a PCR test to travel to Queensland, with the premier demanding uniform isolation rules for all states nationwide.
Premier Steven Marshall (pictured) revealed he expects cases number to double every three or four days and urged people to work from home until the end of January at least
The state carried out 23,734 Covid tests in the last 24 hours but South Australia testing system is buckling under the pressure, bringing in the new restrictions.
‘Yesterday 1750 of our PCR tests were dedicated to a pre-departure test for Queensland so we will not be doing any pre-departure tests for any state going forward,’ he said.
‘We just simply need to dedicate all of the testing capability that we have to those people that have symptoms, and those people that are close contacts.’
Under the state’s latest response to the Omicron crisis, only essential elective surgery will now be done in South Australia hospitals.
‘We’re putting out a direction which will limit the amount of elective surgery to category one and urgent Category Two,’ the premier said.
‘We’re doing this to preserve our health workforce for the important task, which lies ahead with the Omicron variant.’
The state is also set to bring in new rules on mandatory booster shots for key workers in at risk areas.
‘We are very likely now to move to make it mandatory to have three doses = so the two initial doses plus the booster = for all of our frontline health workers, disability workers in South Australia and also those working in aged care,’ said Mr Marshall.
‘It will be a requirement for people to have that booster within two weeks of when they become eligible for them to be considered fully vaccinated.
‘It’s very important that we get those people on the frontline as protected as possible, because we’ve got to make sure that we preserve as much of our health workforce as we possibly can through this period.’
More to follow
Source: Daily Mail
