Sydney Jan 6 (BUS) – Australia saw another day of spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations on Thursday amid concerns that changes to testing requirements could mask the full scope of the outbreak.
The country reported 72,000 cases, compared to 64,000 the day before, while the number of hospitalizations jumped to 3,267 from 2,990 and the number of patients in intensive care rose to 208 from 196, the Associated Press reported.
Victoria has recorded six deaths and 21,997 new cases, the largest daily jump in the number of cases since the pandemic began.
Queensland has reported more than 10,000 cases as health officials warn that many undetected cases may be spreading in the community.
New South Wales saw 34,994 new cases, down slightly from Wednesday’s record high of 35,054. A man in his 20s had a double vaccine among six deaths reported Thursday in Australia’s most populous state.
Case numbers do not necessarily reflect the true spread of the virus because they only count the number of registered cases.
At a news conference on Thursday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended a new policy that Australians no longer need to have a PCR test to confirm a positive rapid antigen test. The change came at a national cabinet meeting with state and territory leaders on Wednesday.
“The case numbers are not a problem,” Morrison said. “The issue is with connectivity to care, and the Commonwealth is providing telehealth support for people to be able to do that and get advice on how to manage infections at home and, if things escalate, ask for more help.”
Health Secretary Martin Foley said people are required to report positive rapid antigen test results to the Department of Health. Anyone who gets a positive result on a rapid antigen test will be treated as a possible case and will have to be isolated.
Since most rapid antigen tests are done at home, experts fear that the new policy will lead to underreporting of cases. They say an accurate picture of case numbers is necessary to ensure hospitals and other medical facilities are prepared.
University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely said moving away from PCR tests would mean case numbers would not be accurate in the future.
“The horse has taken off, and this is the biggest political failure yet in Australia,” Blakely told Australia’s Ship Network Network. “We also haven’t thought about how to upload that data to the monitoring system, so we’re not going to put that in place for the next two weeks.”
Morrison also faced questions Thursday about the Australian Border Force’s decision to revoke the visa granted to Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic ahead of the Australian Open.
Djokovic has been given medical exemption to play at the Australian Open, which begins later this month. Many Australians who struggled to get rapid, inexpensive and often expensive antigen tests, or who were forced into isolation, saw double standards in the country’s treatment of Djokovic.
Morrison denied that Djokovic was singled out when asked if the subsequent cancellation of Djokovic’s visa was political and based on his fame as a sports star.
“One of the things that the Border Force does is that it operates on the basis of intelligence to direct its attention to potential arrivals,” he said. “When you get people to make public statements about what they say they’re going to do, they’re drawing a lot more attention to themselves.”
MI