There are now 411 Western Australians with COVID in hospital after another major jump in virus patients.
Nineteen of those hospitalized are in intensive care, a new record, which comes when 5,514 new cases were reported on Monday.
Two elderly people – a woman in her 80s and a man in her 90s – also died from COVID, bringing the state’s death toll to 445 since the start of the pandemic.
The Australian Medical Association (WA) has used the sharp rise in hospitalizations to demand the return of compulsory mask use across the state, although Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said this it did not reflect the advice of Australian chief medical officer Paul Kelly or WA counterpart Andy Robertson.
“Nationally there are no recommendations … right now, but they strongly encourage the community to wear (masks),” Ms. Sanderson told ABC Radio.
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“I think the appetite to enforce mandates is wear and tear on the community and we need to keep that in mind when health officials in chief make these recommendations.”
Prime Minister Mark McGowan last week refused to confirm whether he would follow in the footsteps of the Victorian government and refused to enact mask mandates if the state health director recommended them, calling the question “hypothetical” and “point debatable “.
While she also said the question was hypothetical, Ms Sanderson said the McGowan government “had always followed the advice of the health director and nothing has changed.”
It was echoed by Mr. McGowan in predicting a difficult winter with the wave of COVID sweeping the state that will likely “get worse before it gets better.”
“I understand people can be anxious,” Ms. Sanderson said.
“This is the second wave we are going through, but I have to say that in Western Australia, our results have been world leaders.
“ICU rates are exceptionally low, the number of people getting very, very sick, and that’s mainly due to our vaccination rates.
“Now, the best thing you can do to protect yourself, your family and our healthcare workers is to receive this fourth dose as soon as you are eligible and receive your dose of flu.
“This is actually the biggest and best tool we have in our armory to fight this disease.”
The number of people hospitalized with COVID has now almost doubled since early July, when it stood at 217.
The impact is evident in the numbers of ambulance ramps that reveal that paramedics have already spent 3920 hours waiting to unload patients at Perth hospitals in the first 17 days of July.
This puts the month on track to comfortably break the previous record of 6585 hours set in August 2021.
The winter hike is being driven by a wave of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 infections that on Saturday prompted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to reverse the decision to end payment of $ 750 for pandemic disasters for people forced to lose their jobs while isolating themselves.
To the pressure on hospitals is added the return of the flu and other respiratory viruses, mostly absent from the country during the two years that Australia remained cut off from widespread international travel.