Fuck. It’s official, friends, we’ve surpassed our record of Aussie COVID hospitalisations. You know, the record that was set in the middle of the January chaos after everyone was out and about for Christmas and New Year’s? Yeah, that one.
Welcome to the worst phase of the pandemic. Or at least that’s what experts are calling it. Sure we may all be double, triple and even quadruple vaxxed out there, but COVID is still ripping through the streets like a haunted Beyblade.
According to data from CovidLive, there are 5,429 COVID patients across Australia right now. The previous record was 5,390 set in January. In somewhat good news, the amount of folks in the ICU is nowhere near our Jan rate thanks to the COVID jab.
In January we had around 420 patients in the ICU. Today we have just 161.
It is also reported that of the 5,429 COVID patients currently in hospital, more than 2,300 are from NSW and more than 1,000 are from QLD.
“The average public hospital has 600 to 700 beds, so we are talking eight major public hospitals,” Vice President of the Australian Medical Association Dr Chris Moy told the Guardian.
“The bottom line is on the ground, my colleagues are angry, desperate, fatigued and they have a terrible situation where there are not enough beds or nurses.
“It’s rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.”
In case you couldn’t tell, now is not the time to be mincing words. Moy would very much like us to know that shit’s fucked.
“[Hospitals] are all under enormous strain. It’s not at the peak, and my understanding is that [cases are] going to [peak] soon, but the peak in hospitals will come much later than that.”
According to the ABC, Australia has the third highest cases and death rate in the world per capita.
“In the past seven days, Australia has ranked number three in cases per million population,” epidemiologist from the Burnet Institute Professor Mike Toole told the ABC.
“We [also] ranked number three for deaths per capita, so much higher than the US, UK, France, Germany.”
The bad news just doesn’t stop coming. I’m going to go lay down and perhaps I will get back up.
